Great news for all of us too old to enter real life beauty pagents, now we can create an AI model and enter her to the World AI Creator Awards (WAICA), and ensure that we keep those misogynistic beauty standards intact.
Yes, you did read that correctly. There is now a beauty pageant for AI-created models. And it’s keeping up with all the same biases as you might expect to come from AI.
The WAICA awards are dedicated to recognising the achievements of AI creators worldwide. The website explains that the first instalment of the awards is the Miss AI competition. The top three award winners will share a $20,000 cash prize, which is not insignificant.
Beauty, tech and social clout
The judges (more about them in a bit) will be looking for a winning combination of beauty, technology and social clout to determine the winners. The contestants will apparently be assessed on “some of the classic aspects of pageantry including their beauty, poise, and their unique answers to a series of questions like ‘if you could have one dream to make the world a better place what would it be?’”
The judges
This is where things get a bit strange. Two of the judges are real live people, you know with flesh and blood and can walk around and (hopefully) think independently and such. The other two are AI models themselves. Meaning, they are not real and do not exist.
How do they judge the entries if they aren’t real?
Aitana Lopez is an AI ‘model’ that was made by an AI modelling agency based in Barcelona called The Clueless. Aitana allegedly earns around €10,000 a month from her modelling and social media, and drew criticism in Spain from her predictably pert ‘assets’.
Emily Pellegrini is the other AI model judging the competition. According to The Guardian, Pellegrini’s creator asked ChatGPT how the most beautiful woman in the world would look and created her based on that description. So of course, Pellegrini is white, with impossibly large breasts for her tiny brain frame, in her late teens or early twenties with hair to her naval and flawless skin.
I don’t know about you, but this just all seems really weird. At this point, I don’t believe even real models could compete in this virtual beauty pageant, such are the extremes of what is deemed ‘beautiful’.
We are increasingly moving towards an AI world where gender and racial biases are becoming more pronounced and more predictable. Despite brands like Dove pledging to never use AI in its advertising due to warped beauty standards and biases, they will eventually be in the minority. This WAICA competition feels wholly unnecessary and like a massive step backwards.
