A Spanish agency became so sick of models and influencers that they created their own with AI — and she’s raking in up to $11,000 a month::Founder Rubén Cruz said AI model Aitana was so convincing that a famous Latin actor asked her on a date.
Instagram had slowly morphed from a website to share artsy filtered cell photos to an advertisement platform, where people are turning themselves into characters living the perfectly imperfect life on social media, in an attempt to turn themselves into living advertisements, to buy and sell products, Every photo (especially the natural looking ones) is carefully shot, curated and edited by a team to imitate authenticity, no different than shooting a movie or a TV show.
So then, what happens if that role of a living advertisment can automated by machines, equally as heartless and unrealistic as these performance of perfect daily lives on Instagram? Why go through the efforts, the hours and manpower, to conduct the photoshoots and Photoshops for that one perfectly imperfect targeted post, when anyone with a modern GPU can effortlessly make thousands of machine generated pictures with way less work in the same timeframe?
Why should the role of “social media influencer” even exist then?
I’ve been unhappy about the state of social media for a long time now. But as it appears, the role of the social media influencer, as the lowest common denominator of photography, will be the first to be rendered redundant by AI automation, which brings me hope that in time, social media can be brought back to what originally was: a place for people to talk to people.
I’m give with cgi models. But you have to tell people it’s s fictional model
You mean like:
Warning! You will never be in a relationship with this model.
Yes. That seems like something people should know.
I get that this is kind of a joke, but we already have a problem with these models/influencers projecting unrealistic beauty ideals and pretending to lead these unrealistic lives, and it’s causing major issues already. If companies can basically craft exactly what they want, I can see it being orders or magnitude worse.
The point of the joke is that it makes no difference if a persona is fake or “real”. I think the issues you raise are real. But it makes no difference to unrealistic beauty standards whether artists alter an existing human body or make one up wholesale. If anything, it’s more benign if people rationally know that it is all a fantasy.
We had all this back in the 1970s with “Robots and Computers will take all our jobs” scaremongering.
As factories & production lines started to use robots and CNC machines, CAD and digital imaging appeared, accounting software etc etc we were all going to lose our jobs and live a life of unemployed leisure.
Never happened.
I’m sure AI will play an important role in the future but like so many new fads it will settle into its niche and we will all be okay.
From all the jobs that will disappear, the jobs of models replaced by AI is probably the ones I care the least.
Two points:
- Companies can more easily manipulate us with marketing if they can just create the perfect model.
- The whole push towards diversity in advertising, particularly in body size and shape, is going to go out the window. Many people will no longer see themselves represented, which could make self esteem go down and the subsequent consequences of that.
- This is about replacing humans with machines and making more profit. The framing around difficult to work with models is a distraction. The AI problem was always a capitalism problem. And here it is in full swing. Buckle up and brush up on your Ludditism people!
- As with AI and shopped imagery and porn, the unrealistic beauty standards problem is about to get ridiculous. There may be a moment coming not too far off where beauty is just not a human thing anymore. Which may be catastrophic (like people can’t have sex with each other anymore) or oddly liberating.
There may be a moment coming not too far off where beauty is just not a human thing anymore. Which may be catastrophic (like people can’t have sex with each other anymore) or oddly liberating.
Here’s a somewhat related article that brings up how this is already happening without AI in the movie industry: Everyone is beautiful and no one is horny
Thanks! I’d read it already. Good one too. Though I wasn’t consciously referencing it in my mind, it no doubt planted the seed for my thought.
The basis of my thought was my own reflection on whenever I’ve seen AI images that are intended to be beautiful and attractive. While they are often somewhat uncanny and even unnatural, in my experience they are definitely hitting the right “buttons”, like an artificial sweetener. But, IME, unlike artificial sweeteners, can effectively go for being more “sweet” than anything natural ever could.
I don’t think I like it, but the capacity is definitely there and I can’t see why people won’t eventually get used to being aroused by some ridiculously proportioned and shiny but undeniably “sexy” AI character/imagery and find increasingly little of interest in our dull, flabby, hairy and flat selves.
For the porn and modeling industries, maybe there’ll be a liberating effect of freeing women from the industry. Maybe sexual relationships will feel free to emphasise the physical and psychological intimacy rather than the visual attractiveness.
In the end though, beauty standards will probably just become more problematic. Weird sci-fi shot is probably in store.
