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Historically, beauty pageants seek to reward the most attractive women. In general they are focused on physical beauty, although today they also say they evaluate personalities and achievements. There were always requirements to enter and being human was a fundamental one. Although today it seems to be excluded.
The World Artificial Intelligence Creator Awards (WAICA) is a global initiative that rewards creators of models and influencers generated with artificial intelligence. In recent times, the phenomenon of these artificial characters on social networks has grown substantially and an economic market has opened up. Lil Miquela, for example, already has 2.5 million followers on Instagram.
The main recognition of this competition is named Miss AI, a clear allusion to the traditional Miss Universe beauty competition, which later had its adaptation in different regions of the world. Miss AI, according to the page, is a contest where “beauty intersects with the world of AI creators.”
But what are the criteria that will be used? On the one hand, beauty will be evaluated. This first point raises doubts about what type of beauty the judges will be looking for, since many of the Miss AI participants already announced do not move away from stereotypes that are not representative of women today.
“If artificial intelligence continues to perpetuate these stereotypes and models of beauty, no one will understand that they are wrong,” Florencia Peric, a psychologist specialized in eating disorders, reflects in dialogue with RED/ACCION. “We have to ask ourselves where it leaves us as a society to continue creating these figures that are clearly unattainable from a human perspective,” she explains.
On the other hand, the contestants will be evaluated for their innovation and application in relation to artificial intelligence tools to create these digital “models and influencers.” Specifically, we will look at the use of their prompts and look in depth at the visual details around the hands, eyes, and backgrounds of the images.
Finally, your social influence will be taken into account: number of followers, audience growth rate and use of other social platforms, such as Instagram, to distribute your content. The prize for the winner of Miss AI is $13,000, which will be distributed between personal compensation as well as financing for a program dedicated to the creation of technological images. Below are some of the participants.
Beauty, increasingly further from reality
It is clear that in this new era of digital influencers a great economic industry has opened: many brands are already looking for these figures to promote their products. Now, the struggle of feminisms in recent years on social networks focused on promoting the true representation of women, their bodies and their ambitions. And these influencers—and their creators—seem to have arrived to hinder this process.
Naomi Wolf, renowned feminist author, writes in one of her essays The Myth of Beauty that, in a world where women achieve political and economic freedom, there is a strong threat: beauty. “We are in the middle of a violent reaction against feminism that uses images of female beauty as a political weapon to stop women’s progress,” she reflects in her book. “There is still one last right to claim,” she says, referring to women’s control over their bodies and their image.
Peric, for his part, identifies that one of the most worrying consequences of the continuation of these narratives has to do with continuing to fuel disagreement with the image, body dysmorphia or eating disorders in women. “We are going to continue thinking that our bodies are wrong, that we have to change them and that there is only one correct way to look good. The fantasy of the effort to achieve it will continue to live,” she says.
“We continue to produce and create a generation in which there are more and more body esteem problems,” says the psychologist. “Not only is it a visible eating disorder, but there is a discomfort with the very big image that prevents us from, for example, going to social gatherings,” she concludes.
