Beauty is in the eye of the creator for this new pageant. Miss AI has all the components of a traditional beauty pageant with one catch: None of the contestants are real.
The World AI Creator Awards team partnered with Fanvue, a subscription-based social platform in which users use avatars, to create the world’s first pageant in which each contestant has been generated entirely by artificial intelligence.
The contest was open to any adult with a social media presence who had the skills to produce an AI model. Any tools or generators could be used to create the contestants, and one creator or team could submit multiple entries as long as each contestant was unique.
Four judges, including two who are AI-generated, weighed in on the contestants’ beauty, poise and answers to typical pageant questions. But they also factored in the technological skills and social clout of the contestants’ creators into an overall score.
Now, the competition is down to 10 finalists. Prizes for the top three competitors include cash — $13,000 for first place, $5,000 for second and $2,000 for third — and various mentorship opportunities.
The Miss AI website doesn't say when the winners will be announced.
The lifelikeness of the contestants is eerie. They all have their own Instagram pages, complete with bios highlighting their character traits, hobbies and thousands of followers.
The feeds are filled with pictures that showcase a realistic life story — some even include AI-generated friends and family, and videos of them speaking.
But even in a pageant created for the fantasy world, the lack of diversity is all too realistic. While their fictional backgrounds offer some variety, the AI-generated contestants are all traditionally beautiful, young and thin.
The pageant puts a new spotlight on the growing concern about AI influencers' impact on social media users, particularly teens and children.
At the beginning of the year, thousands of parents signed an online petition urging TikTok to clearly label AI influencer accounts because they are worried about the unrealistic beauty standards those figures promote.
