This month, U.K.-based online creator platform Fanvue announced the top ten finalists of the inaugural “Miss AI” beauty pageant, and none of them are real. The contestants only exist on social media as “photorealistic images of extremely beautiful young women,” created using a “combination of off-the-shelf and proprietary AI technology,” said NPR. But while the beauty queens are not real, the $5,000 cash prize is.
This pageant is simply the latest platform for influencers created by developers using advanced artificial intelligence. Virtual influencers these days have been featured in fashion campaigns and are even snagging brand deals like their human counterparts. What’s more, the recent boom in AI technology has given them an uncanny photorealistic quality. It is now much harder to spot what is real and what is fake.
AI influencers in mainstream media
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A ‘symptom of a larger issue’
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