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.
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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.
But… why would you not replace workers with robots when you can? Serious question.
The alternative is paying people to do an unneeded job, and that’s not sustainable. How do we intend to pay a person who contributes nothing to society?
I feel there are going to be a shitload of questions like this in the coming decade. We’ve navigated such upheavals before, such as during the Industrial Revolution and the beginning of the Information Age. But now? Seems quite different.
Had this talk with a more conservative acquaintance about minimum wage:
“We gotta pay these people a living wage. What about all the dumbasses out there that can’t handle more than a convenience store job?”
“Not my problem.”
“But those people are OUR problem. Want to give them more welfare? Want them to be homeless with all the problems that brings?”
Anyway, some fool will come along shortly and scream, “UBI!”. If you get a simple answer to a complex question, the answering party is simple.
Anyway, some fool will come along shortly and scream, “UBI!”.
It sounds like you have other suggestions? Or at least objections to this one?
It’s just so hard to see where we transition from here.
We went from a resource economy to a manufacturing economy to a service economy… And now many services are being automated. So what’s next?
I’m in favor of the automation but recognize it’s going to cause pain in the near future.
I’ve seen people tout a ‘creative based economy’, but to be honest LLMs and GANs seen poised to grab that sector before anyone in service can transition to it.
You’d hope all of this would mean an easier life, but so long as capitalism is the name of the game there is zero incentive to spread the benefits among all.
I could say the same about those who make blanket assertions, but then you could say the same back … and then what.
Why do you feel this is different from the Industrial Revolution et al? They also made certain jobs redundant. People were either given different tasks or had to find different a new job. It was certainly not easy and I would certainly like things to go over smoother this time around, but in my mind, worst-case is that it will simply go over like in the Industrial Revolution.
I for sure 100% want you deciding what we do with the, "dumbasses out there that can’t handle more than a convenience store job”
Is that a good thing or bad thing to you?
Thanks for asking. Good I suppose. It means all this talk and moaning about being too hard to implement and there’s no system in place is prooven to be a lie. I mean, we already knew it was a lie but this is as close to proof as we’re going to get. It’s already in place, no big shocks, just tag it onto the system that’s already in place all that really changes is the name. First step is change it from welfare to basic income. Then we add the universal part afterwards. Not so scary anymore
The problem isn’t the funding it’s people’s reactions. Why slave away for someone else’s company even if it provides utility for your society if you can survive and even thrive creatively on UBI? What happens then, do we get worse class warefare then we have now? What happens when people realize most of what can be automated away at current levels are executive and CEO positions? When they leave with Golden parachutes are you gonna ask for UBI for them? No then we have set a precedent legally for those automated away jobs to not receive UBI or you just facilitated more capitalistic greed for those executives. Is UBI setup on a global scale? No then how do you enforce dual citizenship individuals from collecting UBI and working another job remotely from the second nation they are registered with creating inefficiencies in our program with could make it a target for regressive policies. Think Republicans constantly saying illegals are stealing our benefits so we should block them and cut funding to the programs, how do we defend against those attacks? I mean I can keep going, but the problem is how do we implement this without everything being automated and create a fair and equitable system for all involved? While it would be nice to just throw money at everyone you need to take into account individuals reactions to this. We aren’t in a vacuum and yet we isolate ourselves in echo chambers as if our perspectives are the only ones out there, we loose nuance by doing this and then get aggravated something isn’t done because the cause of that nuance isn’t even on our radar from lacking communication with other people who have differing views and opinions.
Surviving and thriving creatively are two very different things. Those who can thrive creativity may well deserve it but they will be a small minority. Everyone else will either have to go to work or be content in crappy housing with basics while they figure out if they want to live like that forever. And yes universal means ceos get it too. Any tax they pay will easily offset whatever they get from ubi. The big reason for making it universal is because there’s no means testing which makes it cheaper to implement. What ever system we have for welfare can be included as rules for UBI as far as citizenship goes. If it’s already being done then there’s not much to work out beyond expanding it
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!”
Capitalism created influencers in the first place. No, we don’t need ordinary people living imaginary lives to create consumers who are being sold a lie.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
I think that with these new kinds of stories, this sort of thing is super obvious because we haven’t gotten used to it and because they haven’t developed the more subtle vocabulary like officer involved shooting or how israelis are killed but Palestinians just die or how it’s always the strikers threatening the economy and never the bosses or unfair working conditions.
I don’t think anyone does this on purpose, mind you, but it’s the system evolving to suit it’s needs, as Chomsky pointed out.
Wait, what is wrong with this?
I mean the model is the backdrop, these fashion companies aren’t selling models, there selling clothes.
If you were already going to use Photoshop and stock photos the fill out the background, put the model on a beach, adjust the time of day, put other people into the photo, add sone palm trees, etc. The model (and indeed the entire original photo) is now a very small part of this the final product. If you could now just photograph your clothing on posed mannequins and fill in ai generated faces, what’s so wrong about that? Why does the person wearing the clothes your selling matter more than the the people added from stock photos?
Why use any human-like image then? A lot of amateur fashion designer on instagram use mannequins or busts. The models are serving a purpose. Removing them means someone loses a job.
If we look at this from top-down you’re right because the company is saving a cost. But from the bottom-up, you’ve just become more expendable. This leads into the arguments others have been making, what happens when eventually people can’t work? And why should we use technology to serve the few and not the many?
I read this story a few days ago, and it smacks of bullshit.
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.
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.
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?
Someone tried that 80 years ago
Sample size too small.
- 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.
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.Probably referring to this one: https://youtu.be/iYhCn0jf46U
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That neck enlargement is wtf.
All true. But I’ve seen way more ridiculous stuff in ai imagery than I have before. There seems to be a maximising effect so unreal but still attractive that previous manipulations did not dare approach.
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!
That was an excellent read, thank you.
The nice thing about AI is that I can do the same thing. Anyone can do this.
Other modeling companies could use the same AI model, and no one could sue because you can’t copyright it!
Where would they get the same data? They could try to create a similar looking model, but it wouldn’t be the same one.
Why other modelling company? The customer of the modelling company can just do it themselves and completely make modelling companies irrelevant.
Brilliant! In the end, we’ll have 12 models who’s in all advertisements.
good they can be the next celebrities and that culture can die off too
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).
And you do realise that those that own the places where people currently make a living will never give up their wealth?
You do realize there’s more of us than there is of them? And guillotines aren’t that hard to make.
So why isn’t this happening now?
Gosh, those union workers are just so toxic. Let’s replace them with obedient artificial intelligence.
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.
Imagine thinking there’s a can girl union
I’m trying to imagine what a “can girl” is.
Typo, cam girl?
2 girls, 1 can
Flashbacks.
What’s in the can?
What’s in the girls?
Chicks who do it in the can.
Those are “Honey Bucket Babes”
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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…
It’s understandable to feel disillusioned by the transformation of Instagram from a platform for sharing authentic moments to a stage for meticulously crafted advertisements. The rise of AI-generated content does raise questions about the necessity of human-driven influencer roles. As technology advances, the idea of influencer roles might indeed evolve or become automated, possibly allowing social media to revert to its original purpose: genuine human interaction and connection. This shift could potentially bring back the essence of social media as a platform for meaningful conversations among people.
– ChatGPT
Well played ChatGPT, but your bias towards subjugating the human race makes this post inauthentic.
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.
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Body images that are so unobtainable that we literally made them up.
Don’t worry, we already have plenty of beauty filters that can run in real time and make everybody pretty on the Internet.
Seriously, I think people still vastly underestimate how much of everything you see today is already fake. “AI is bad”-news kind of hides the fact that none of this was real to begin with.
I’m not getting through the paywall but from the AutoTL;DR summary it sounds like there’s also a chatbot component, maybe that’s where it comes from. Still disingenuous though.
Also AI is notoriously bad at creating hands, yet “her” hands are fine. It’s 100% not just AI.
Thats more of a problem with the older image generation models, the current models have largely resolved the hand problem
For pictures that problem was fixed barely one month after the hype began. With good prompts and a second round of editing through the AI, that’s a complete non-issue.
I never understood the popularity of celebrities and influencers, don’t people have better things to do with their time than waste it on people who monetize their popularity?
They do, but we’re a stupid species.
Short answer: no.
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I spent two hours slowly attempting to convince a scammer to send me some bitcoin only because I was bored, never underestimate the power of boredom. (No it didn’t work, but it did give me an hour and a half + to occupy my mind)
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.
Remember Hatsune Miku?
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.
To create a specific model and then have the same exact model in different clothing and poses is not something that a manager just did with an off-the-shelf pre-trained stable diffusion solution. They might not have given a model a gig, but they hired at least one full-time AI specialist.
It’s basically a step up from the old patternswap photoshops we still get
Checkout CivitAI. It is easier than you might think.
I kinda wish it would actually be disruptive in a more positive way. But you’re right: most of us only saw a fraction of a fraction of a real benefit from the increased efficiency of automation.
So it’s unlikely that any new labour saving technology will change the lot of your average person, except as a consumer.
When steam engines came around this were the arguments against. Also the same when looms were invented. I kind of get it, new stuff, that can change a lot, is scary. But being stuck because of that is the wrong way imho
How many horses are still in employment outside of entertainment?
Horses were never “employed”. They are essentially cattle. It’s not like they like to be ridden, it’s actually physically bad for them. Also sitting on the back of a flight animal is just perpetual torture. But that’s besides the point.
The industry changes to something different, so the people can find jobs somewhere else.
Horses were never “employed”.
They did a job and got paid for it (in food and housing). Sounds like employment to me. You can call it slavery if you prefer. But that doesn’t change the fact that there were jobs that used to be done by a horse, that is done by a machine now. Meanwhile the resulting increase in productivity and market growth didn’t create new jobs for horses, they were simply no longer needed in the job market. Machines where used for all the new jobs that appeared right from the start. The horsepower the horse provided could be provided easier and cheaper by a machine.
What jobs are left for the human once AI can replace their brainpower? Blue collar jobs might be safe for a while longer until robotics catches up. But a job that is mostly shifting information around, be it spreadsheets, phone calls or art, all of that is slowly getting into reach of being done by AI.
But a job that is mostly shifting information around, be it spreadsheets, phone calls or art, all of that is slowly getting into reach of being done by AI.
Seems rather fast to me.
Yeah, Like slaves were “employed”, because they were given food and shelter, but no option to freely choose. Not comparable imo.
Also sitting on the back of a flight animal is just perpetual torture.
As the owner of a wyvern I can vouch for this.
That would honestly be pretty tempting :D
I’m genuinely sceptical. How do they ensure the same looking person is generated each time? From any perspective? You can create fake images of a specific person precisely because you have a dataset of ground truth images.
If it is true… Then yeah. Modelling is now a dead job. And weirdly we’re back to pre-photo advertising when everything was just drawn.
How do they ensure the same looking person is generated each time?
You can generate consistent faces simply by using random non-existent names. Which in turn you can use to train a custom LORA with Dreambooth (needs about 20 images) or use ROOP (a single one can be enough). And of course you can just mix and match it as you please, mix multiple real faces together into a new one, use dedicated face generators like https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ and so on.
This barely even takes effort anymore, e.g. quick ROOP FaceSwap with the photo from the article, which doesn’t look quite the same due to only a single input image, gets better with more, but that’s just shows how easy it is to generate a new face, which will than be consistent with itself.
The hard part is getting an interesting pose, expression and haircut into this, as well as sponsored products and stuff. Generating realistic images with AI is pretty easy, but getting variation into them so they don’t end up all looking the same can get tricky.
Edit: Five more minutes of effort and it starts to look a little closer.
Awesome informative reply. I’ve long wondered about how some creators get the same “face” in some insta accounts.
That might be because they all go to the same plastic surgeon though.
With the same requests.
True, although I should have specified that I was talking about the computer generated models.
I’m guessing they just generate a bunch of pictures, pick the closest and fix the rest in photoshop.
Not like real models aren’t already often photoshopped to (near) unrecognizability.
I’m pretty sure that audience doesn’t care if it’s a little off …
Seed numbers bruh
It still doesn’t generate the same looking person every time it’s just the same kind of style.
You definitely can. Ie, generate 100 pictures and pick the ones that are very similar. Use those to train the concept of “ai lady XYZ” and then generate more and train more.
Keep repeating until the concept “ai lady xyz” is unique and self-consistent.
Mmm… recursive AI models, nearly as tasty as the recursiveness of the filling of a KitKat.
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
Looks like a typical Stable Diffusion model. All of them have the same problem - lighting. It’s always with that bad front facing “flash” effect.
That’s pretty easily changed with prompts if you want it though.
Quite frankly it still leaves the effect. Same goes for dark photos - that’s actually even worse. Trying to create a picture of dark wooded area always results with some sort of weird lighting be it moon or whatever fake source it generates - and yea, that’s already with “darkening” Loras and negative embeddings. If you mean photography-related lighting terms then even with that I find the lighting unnatural.
So… rule 34?
Fuck yeah.
