‘Miss AI’ pageant’s fake contestants can lead to the exploitation of real-life women | Opinion

All beauty pageants have one thing in common: real women.

But the new Miss AI pageant challenges the need for human participation.

The personas competing in this competition look like real women, with robust and active Instagram accounts — but they don’t exist.

In fact, most of the contestants are controlled by male creators behind a computer.

The pageant, from the World AI Creators Awards, aims to “celebrate the technical skill and work behind digital influencer personas from across the world.” The pageant proclaims itself “a monumental leap forward.”

For technology, this might be true. For women, it’s false.

The introduction of artificial intelligence into beauty pageants creates dangerous expectations and standards for society and real women.

The winner of the pageant will be announced Monday. “She” will be chosen from a list of 10 finalists, who are all AI-generated women.

Miss AI judges the competitors on their beauty, the technology used to generate them, and their social media clout or following. Traditional pageants such as Miss Universe focus on values such as intelligence, leadership and talent.

“At Miss USA, it was worth nothing, what we did on stage,” Haley Berger, Miss Kansas USA 2023, told me. “What was worth everything was what we said in our interviews.”

Berger is the epitome of a role model, as the Miss Universe Organization hopes all of its participants will be. She said her character was the most important part to her and the judges while competing.

Berger is a graduate student at the University of Kansas earning her Masters of Business Education and Doctor of Pharmacy. And after she had failed a year of pharmacy school and found herself in the darkest spot of her life, she entered the world of pageants.

“I rediscovered my independence, you know, I rediscovered my worth and my confidence,” she told me.

Traditional pageants, although they do value beauty, have also developed into scholarship foundations and character-valuing organizations. Miss AI, without regard for character, seems to propagate stereotypical and unattainable beauty standards using fake women.

All 10 finalists have acne-free skin, slim bodies and perfectly curated “lives.”

WAICA’s Miss AI is sponsored by Fanvue, a platform similar to the adult content subscription site OnlyFans — but with an AI twist. Fanvue hosts artificially-generated explicit adult content. Two of the 10 Miss AI finalists have an “explicit content” Fanvue account linked directly to their Instagram profiles.

The popular OnlyFans prohibits most AI-generated content. Its community guidelines state that a user “cannot post AI-generated or AI-enhanced content featuring anyone other than the verified OnlyFans creator.” Fanvue, with no restrictions, has embraced AI-content creators, and has gained in popularity.

Even fake women aren’t safe from oversexualization.

In a world where realistic deepfake images and photo manipulation are becoming weapons against women, profiting off of AI-generated women is harmful, deepening the dangers of digital exploitation.

Not only does the idea of an AI pageant undermine the purpose of traditional pageants — it demonstrates how unsafe new internet technology is becoming for women.

When Berger asks people what they think pageants consist of, she said they usually respond with “jets and sky rises and Playboy.” She believes that the people who create and judge something like Miss AI must have the same superstitions about pageantry.

Two of the judges are AI-generated women. The human judges are Sally-Ann Fawcett, a beauty pageant historian, and Andrew Bloch, a marketing consultant and entrepreneur.

When announcing on Instagram his role as judge in this contest, Bloch wrote: “AI Creators are becoming some of the most marketable properties on the planet, driving huge engagement and attracting high value brand partnerships.”

These AI-generated women, the sexualization of their fake bodies and the perpetuation of stereotypically “perfect” standards are all marketable. But profits don’t mean that it is ethical.

At some point, women need to stop being seen as commodities. And fake women shouldn’t be created to be exploited.

Fake personas should not be sexually exposed or judged on their beauty, and neither should actual people. Miss AI, and the swirl of stereotypes that makes it possible, mock not only the pageant world, but all real women.

Divya Gupta is a Kansas City Star Opinion intern. She is a Leawood native and a journalism and economics student at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.