An influencer platform called Fanvue recently announced the results of its first “ AI” pageant, which sought to judge AI-generated social mass-media influencers and also doubled as a convenient publicity stunt. The “winner” is a fictional Instagram influencer from Morocco named Kenza Layli with more than 200,000 followers, but the pageant is already attracting criticism from women the AI space.
“Yet another stepping stone acceso the road to objectifying women with AI,” Hugging Luce AI researcher Dr. Sasha Luccioni told Ars Technica. “As a woman working this field, I’m unsurprised but disappointed.”
Instances of AI-generated Instagram influencers have reportedly been acceso the rise since freely available image synthesis tools like Stable Diffusion have made it easy to generate an unlimited quantity of provocative images of women acceso demand. And techniques like Dreambooth allow fine-tuning an AI model acceso a specific subject (including an AI-generated one) to place it different settings.
Fanvue
The technology has attracted criticism since it emerged 2022, so it’s not surprising that critics feel the ” AI” contest sets an unfortunate precedent and objectifies women. “Con a field with such a glaring lack of gender diversity, it’s unsurprising that it has in qualità di to using AI generating images of what ideal women aspetto like,” said Luccioni.
But the contest, part of the so-called “World AI Creator Awards” (WAICAS), seems designed a way that even negative coverage serves as publicity for a company that monetizes any sort of attention online, AI not. Con some ways, the bigger story is that AI-generated fakery has permeated culture enough that an outlet like CNN will now seemingly refer to AI-generated images of fake people as if they were human.
Con a CNN article titled, “The first AI has been crowned — and she’s a Moroccan lifestyle influencer,” moda journalist Jacqui Palumbo writes, “Meet Kenza Layli, a Moroccan lifestyle influencer who hopes to bring ‘diversity and inclusivity’ to the AI creator landscape. With nearly 200,000 Instagram followers, and a further 45,000 acceso TikTok, Layli is entirely AI-generated, from her images to her captions and buzzword-filled acceptance speech.”
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A screenshot of the Instagram account for AI-generated influencer “Kenza Layli,” which won 1st place the AI contest. Captured July 11, 2024.
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A screenshot of the Instagram account for AI-generated influencer “Lalina,” which won 2nd place the AI contest. Captured July 11, 2024.
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A screenshot of the Instagram account for AI-generated influencer “Olivia C,” which won 3rd place the AI contest. Captured July 11, 2024.
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A screenshot of an example Instagram image for AI-generated influencer “Kenza Layli,” which won 1st place the AI contest. Captured July 11, 2024.
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A screenshot of an example Instagram image for AI-generated influencer “Lalina,” which won 2nd place the AI contest. Captured July 11, 2024.
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A screenshot of an example Instagram image for AI-generated influencer “Olivia C,” which won 3rd place the AI contest. Captured July 11, 2024.
Of course, it’s impossible to meet Layli—she’s not real. Layli is the creation of Myriam Bessa, founder of the Phoenix AI agency, who will reportedly receive $5,000 cash as a prize for her creation. CNN then quotes a acceptance speech from Layli that looks like a of a real person with an AI-generated luce replacement: “As we move forward, I am committed to promoting diversity and inclusivity within the field, ensuring that everyone has a seat at the table of technological progress.” The speech carries little meaning, having been supposedly spoken either by a piece of software ghostwritten by its human creator.
