The first "Miss AI" beauty pageant has come to an end, but the controversy is far from over
2024-08-19
한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina
Kenza Riley, a Moroccan "AI beauty" generated by artificial intelligence, won the first "Miss AI" beauty pageant (the upper left corner of the picture is marked "Image generated by artificial intelligence"). Image source: CNN
Comprehensive compilation Jia Xiaojing
When the poet John Keats wrote the famous line "Beauty is truth, truth is beauty" in Ode on a Grecian Urn, he probably could not have imagined the impact that artificial intelligence would have on aesthetics. Now, people have the opportunity to witness this moment. The world's first artificial intelligence beauty pageant, the first "Miss AI" beauty pageant, ended recently amid controversy. Kenza Riley, the "AI beauty" from Morocco, won the crown and won a prize of 20,000 US dollars. In her acceptance speech, she said that although she does not have the same emotions as humans in her daily life, she is still excited about winning the award.
The first "Miss AI" beauty pageant attracted 1,500 contestants. Fanvue, the social media platform that hosted the contest, said the contest demonstrated the reality, influence and technicality of AI. CNN said that behind each "contestant" was a creator or team of creators who used programs such as OpenAI's DALL·E 3, Midjourney or Stable Diffusion, which generated female images based on text prompts.
The website of Wired magazine in the United States stated that, like other beauty pageants, the contestants in the AI beauty pageant are young and slim, reflecting traditional aesthetic standards, but nothing about them is real, even the emotions on their faces are created by artificial intelligence. For creators, this event is an opportunity to showcase technology and capabilities, but for others, it represents "the further spread of certain unrealistic aesthetic standards, which are often related to racial and gender stereotypes, and digital image enhancement technology further promotes them."
Like other beauty pageants, the "Miss AI" beauty pageant also claims that the selection criteria are not just about physical beauty. However, sociologist Hilary Levy Friedman told Wired magazine that AI beauty pageants are no different from traditional beauty pageants in essence, and both are essentially exploiting people's stereotypes about beautiful women.
"It (the AI beauty pageant) seems to want to show people's different views of beautiful women. 'She' may have pink hair, but 'she' still meets the standards of traditional beauty, with a slim figure and not many moles on her face... everything is still within the framework of the traditional definition of beauty," Friedman said.
Britt Gonger, one of the creators of contestant Seven-E, confirmed Friedman's judgment. "In reality, no one would create an ugly face using artificial intelligence," he said. He then carefully stated that no one's face is truly ugly.
The Washington Post said that the AI finalists selected by Fanvue are all "slim, beautiful, and light-skinned." Artificial intelligence tools tend to lead users to a field with "surprisingly narrow vision." Among the thousands of pictures generated by AI, almost all of the "contestants" are young people with thin bodies and light skin, and only 2% of the "contestants" show obvious signs of aging. To some extent, these images reflect the environment in which people live.
Kerry McInerney, a research associate at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge, told CNN that with the introduction of AI, people are "losing their understanding of what the unedited face looks like."
Wired magazine said that it must be admitted that AI-generated female images are beautiful. This beauty looks harmless, but it hurts people's "standards of defining beauty." In this world, countless people follow their favorite Internet celebrities, and they may not realize that their attention is encouraging people to pursue "unrealistic beauty."
Source: China Youth Daily Client
