This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
They frame this article in such a weird way. Like replacing the models and their jobs was justified because they had egos etc...
I can see similar framing used to replace other workers because they want to be paid fairly or do something drastic like take bathroom breaks... :D
I mean...the moment any large corporation figures out a way to replace human workers that need things like bathroom breaks (and basic human rights, and paychecks) and do the same work with robots and AI... literally the next moment, they'll have the AI start generating layoff notices.
It's just less flashy when it happens that way because there's no need for that AI to look like a beautiful young person.
They don't need a justification. It is just capitalism. The second it becomes profitable to develop and implement an AI to replace a human, it will be done. And half the country/world will be rooting for them saying "yeah, go capitalism!"
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 have never been on Instagram, only joined last year because apparently doing business over it's messenger is now a norm. Subscribed to a few of my friends and was terrified. I know them, I know they're not living like that, but the amount of effort they put into trying to appear more successful than they actually are is astounding. It's not just showing the good things and hiding the bad ones like people on e.g. facebook do, but spending hours every day into faking it and outdoing each other. Two have actual depression and should seek help ASAP, but on Instagram they are trying to twist it in some kind of brag/motivation/skit to show how better they are than others. This is absolutely unhealthy, and I am now advising everyone to get off it and stay away for the sake of their own mental health.
I've been off social media for some years now(I'm still depressed, but i feel better than when I was using socmed) and it's been a long time since i heard people explain SM so fucking accurately than these 2 above me.
Thanks Margot, for taking some time out of your busy schedule to post this fabulously intricate meta-contribution on bots, identity, and social media! Its much appreciated.
If they only appreciate me enough to hand me my Oscar this year...
Everyone wants a life where they can make six figures just hanging out and taking pictures all day. I don't blame them. The problem is we went too far on telling people they can be anything they want.
Remember Hatsune Miku?
Gosh, those union workers are just so toxic. Let’s replace them with obedient artificial intelligence.
Capitalists gonna capitalist.
And then they wonder why their sales are tanking, when it turns out AI's can't buy their products and everyone else is too poor to even consider it.
Yeah this title is dumb as hell. Some models and influencers are difficult to work with, and some are easy. The ones that are shitty get less work, naturally. It's just like any other industry. My partner works with them all the time.
This company made an AI model because they're fucking cheap.
From all the jobs that will disappear, the jobs of models replaced by AI is probably the ones I care the least.
Two points:
It's not like ads use real people anymore. Everything in advertisement has been highly Photoshoped for ages. I don't understand your point about representation though. It will be easier to create diverse models in all shapes and sizes.
There is no reason AIs can't generate diverse kinds of people.
There are reasons why it would be better at generating some things better than others in a way that’s roughly proportional to the disparity of training data volume used in the model.
Based on the information the ad services know about individual viewers, they could customize the ads using invented models that perfectly match the viewers’ ethnicity/demographics.
IMO hyper-individualized ads that are personalized would increase diversity. It’d also be a new frontier in advertising manipulation.
I could see point #2 going either way... it could actually be a good thing. If no one trusts images, then why would anyone assume they are their BMI?
An influencer that is always just slightly better than you, like you in every other way, but slightly better, slightly more aspirational. Look at what you could achieve if you tried just a little bit more, worked a little bit harder, spent a little bit more money and always just out of reach, but targeted specifically at you. Fuck no, that's horrific.
So... rule 34?
Fuck yeah.
This seems deeply, disturbingly fucked up. "Fuck working with real people, who have their own goals and desires out of a career, we're just gonna use an AI since no one can tell the difference." It's fucked up on multiple levels, not least since the fashion industry was already full of broken people before AI hit the scene.
was already full of broken people before AI hit the scene.
so why not take the people out of the equation?
Because broken as they are, people still come first before AI. Or they should, anyway.
Should we want them to be though? If it's obviously caused a lot of harm to many people?
Anybody that pays for a cam-girl is an idiot and I feel slightly bad for them. Anybody that pays for an AI rendering of a cam-girl is a fucking moron and that’s it
The unrealistic beauty standards are already ridiculous. Several years ago there was a vid showing how they changed a model's photo session. Even the model wasn't as perfect as her pictures, it was staggering.
Being able to do it in video, well, that's old hat now too. Just look at movies.
It'll just be faster with less manual effort with AI, with the same unrealistic results.
What's more concerning to me is how much easier it'll be for media to ~~lie~~, er, misrepresent situations visually.
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.
Thanks!
In there is mentioned the idea that music might be a supernormal stimulus (of attractive speaking patterns and voices) ... which is fantastic to me. Never thought of it that way, even though it's kinda obvious in hindsight given that it's widely accepted that we just like the sound of harmonious sounds. Supernormal stimulus is an interesting and compelling framing of it though!
The nice thing about AI is that I can do the same thing. Anyone can do this.
This is about replacing humans with machines
You do realize this is a good thing, right?
It’s a sign of how much capitalism is ingrained into peoples minds that people see machines replacing humans as a bad thing. The point of life is not working. As humans we need certain tasks done to be able to live a comfortable life, food needs to be produced, houses built, etc. But doing these tasks is just a means to an end, they aren’t the goal. Jobs aren’t a good thing, they are a necessary evil. As humans we should strive to eliminate all jobs.
And you do realise that those that own the places where people currently make a living will never give up their wealth? Unless the government makes the companies pay taxes at the highest bracket (I'm guessing that an AI will be the most experienced employee from day 0) for each instance and each position that the ai is taking over, businesses will fire everyone not essential (read: the guy that plugs in the server).
We need to make struggle posts a thing. Flex your struggle fam! it would fuck the AI up for a little bit at least haha.
Maybe influencers will actually have to grow some talent to compete
This is the best summary I could come up with:
It has proved a highly lucrative venture for the company, with Cruz telling Euronews that Aitana brings in an average of €3,000 ($3,300) a month, but on one occasion took in €10,000 ($10,900).
Customers of CarynAI pay $1 per minute of time with the virtual Marjorie, which is described by her owners, Forever Voices, as an “extension of Caryn’s consciousness.”
But AI models, influencers, and “girlfriends” also embody the debates at the center of the nascent technology, including ethics, labor, and humanity’s ability to control it.
In a May interview with Business Insider, Marjorie said the bot appeared to have gone rogue and started engaging in sexually explicit conversations with her customers.
“In today’s world, my generation, Gen Z, has found themselves to be experiencing huge side effects of isolation caused by the pandemic, resulting in many being too afraid and anxious to talk to somebody they are attracted to,” Marjorie told Business Insider.
Users have been unable to access CarynAI for the last month after John Meyer, the chief executive of Forever Voices, was arrested on suspicion of arson, 404Media reported.
The original article contains 737 words, the summary contains 182 words. Saved 75%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
