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.
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.
How do we intend to pay a person who contributes nothing to society?
Why must we value how a person “contributes to society” via their output for capitalism?
Is studying philosophy useless? Is making art? Is reaping the benefits of a society built upon tens of thousands of years of human innovation to just sit back and relax a bit?
Humanity worked hard to get to a point where this is even a question. If you listen to the capitalists saying “If you’re not working you’re worthless” then you’ve been tricked. Tens of thousands of years of human innovation and suffering to advance society to a point where we don’t all have to work, but the rich want you to think that’s a bad thing. It is not natural that the benefits of all of that effort and suffering should all collect in the hands of a few at the top while everyone else suffers.
The “simple answer” is UBI because there literally is no alternative short of outright killing people that don’t work to maintain automation. You and everyone else deserves a cut of that pie, we and all of our ancestors put blood, sweat, and tears into it. Let the people relax and enjoy the fruits of that society.
The alternative is paying people to do an unneeded job, and that’s not sustainable.
Well unfortunately that’s the proposed solution too. When you ask an AI optimist what their solution is for workers after their jobs are replaced by ai, a common answer is a universal basic income. But if you believe it’s unsustainable to pay a person to do a job that could be done by a robot (which for the record isn’t really accurate, as we’ve been sustaining that), then it probably isn’t sustainable to pay that same person for doing nothing…
So we’re left with the same problem, what do we do about the workers?
I wonder if UBI is more unsustainable, or unsustainable at all - imagine a future where most things can be produced so efficiently without the involvement of humans that the idea of not doing so is simply preposterous, akin to insist on using horses after motorization became widely available. Employing humans might incur a higher lost opportunity cost than simply paying everybody to do “nothing”. I’m using “” since all those people would of course do something, just not grind for bare survival or “the economy”, which is arguably isn’t necessary anymore, or at least not as necessary as it once was.
In a way, overcoming work (as in “unwanted compensated grind”) is a way to truly live up to our potential as humans because it asks the very basic question of “how to be?” outside of what for millennia was basic necessity or narrowly defined by society.
then it probably isn’t sustainable to pay that same person for doing nothing…
Why is that unsustainable?
That person isn’t going to spend their life doing “nothing,” humans have an intrinsic need to do something. Psychology has shown us pretty conclusively. The difference is once we’ve automated so much, that can be whatever we want instead of focusing on the bare necessities to survive. The only way “paying someone to do nothing” is unsustainable is if you’ve bought into the lie that our value as human beings is inherently tied to what we produce for capitalism.
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.
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”
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.
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
They don’t need a justification. It is just capitalism. The second it becomes possible 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.
There is no reason AIs can’t generate diverse kinds of people.
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
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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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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
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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.
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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
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
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.
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Awesome informative reply. I’ve long wondered about how some creators get the same “face” in some insta accounts.
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.
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.
I’m give with cgi models. But you have to tell people it’s s fictional model
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Yes, and in my country (Norway) there are now laws that require any promotional image that is modified to state so.
I see a similar thing being required with fully cgi models
You mean like:
Warning! You will never be in a relationship with this model.
Yes. That seems like something people should know.
I get that this is kind of a joke, but we already have a problem with these models/influencers projecting unrealistic beauty ideals and pretending to lead these unrealistic lives, and it’s causing major issues already. If companies can basically craft exactly what they want, I can see it being orders or magnitude worse.
The point of the joke is that it makes no difference if a persona is fake or “real”. I think the issues you raise are real. But it makes no difference to unrealistic beauty standards whether artists alter an existing human body or make one up wholesale. If anything, it’s more benign if people rationally know that it is all a fantasy.
But it makes no difference to unrealistic beauty standards whether artists alter an existing human body or make one up wholesale.
This is what I’m not so sure about, as in the completely crafted one can do anything at any time with almost zero effort. They don’t age. They don’t have any imperfections. There’s no risk (?) of them ever going off the rails. Even tho the influences project an fake front, you can still be them, as they are real. If something isn’t even real, you could create things that could never possibly exist.
I think the issue is that they have a problem with it for the wrong reasons and fixing it for the wrong people. So the influencer issue is lying to scam people and editing their images leading and young people to expect unrealistic appearances. And the model issue is they need to be paid to live.
So here’s an AI to look unrealistic to lie and scam people and produce unrealistic standards whom you can’t date anyways. But hey, it doesn’t need to be paid to live.
Speak for yourself, my best friend gave me a copy of the source code ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
brown chicken brown coww
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You should assume that even if the woman were real… they don’t owe you a date, relationship, their time then either.
