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.

  • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    111
    arrow-down
    8
    ·
    10 months ago

    From all the jobs that will disappear, the jobs of models replaced by AI is probably the ones I care the least.

    • Pandantic@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      10 months ago

      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.
      • jol@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        10 months ago

        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.

      • Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        10 months ago

        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?

        • BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          10 months ago

          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.

      • meat_popsicle@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        10 months ago

        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.

  • Uniquitous@lemmy.one
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    92
    arrow-down
    12
    ·
    10 months ago

    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.

  • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    76
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    10 months ago

    Gosh, those union workers are just so toxic. Let’s replace them with obedient artificial intelligence.

  • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    77
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    10 months ago
    1. 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!
    2. 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.
    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      31
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      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.

    • wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      21
      ·
      10 months ago

      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

      • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        10
        ·
        10 months ago

        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.

          • maegul (he/they)@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            10 months ago

            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!

      • randon31415@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        10 months ago

        Other modeling companies could use the same AI model, and no one could sue because you can’t copyright it!

        • lunarul@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          ·
          10 months ago

          Where would they get the same data? They could try to create a similar looking model, but it wouldn’t be the same one.

        • Merlin@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          10 months ago

          Why other modelling company? The customer of the modelling company can just do it themselves and completely make modelling companies irrelevant.

    • BorgDrone@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      10 months ago

      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.

      • JeffKerman1999@sopuli.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        8
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        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).

        • BorgDrone@lemmy.one
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          3
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          10 months ago

          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.

  • Margot Robbie@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    62
    ·
    10 months ago

    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.

    • drathvedro@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      10 months ago

      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.

      • Scavenger_Solardaddy@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        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.

    • the_lennard@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      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.

    • Captain Janeway@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      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

      • rekliner@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        10 months ago

        Well played ChatGPT, but your bias towards subjugating the human race makes this post inauthentic.

    • guacupado@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      10 months ago

      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.

    • lloram239@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      20
      ·
      10 months ago

      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.

    • MBM@lemmings.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      10 months ago

      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.

  • Matriks404@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    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?

  • PeachMan@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    41
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    10 months ago

    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.

  • manmikey@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    26
    arrow-down
    5
    ·
    10 months ago

    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.

    • lunarul@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      10 months ago

      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.

    • UNWILLING_PARTICIPANT@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      10 months ago

      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.

    • WallEx@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      10 months ago

      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

        • WallEx@feddit.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          10 months ago

          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.

          • lloram239@feddit.de
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            8
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            10 months ago

            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.

            • gandalf_der_12te@feddit.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              10 months ago

              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.

            • WallEx@feddit.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              arrow-down
              3
              ·
              10 months ago

              Yeah, Like slaves were “employed”, because they were given food and shelter, but no option to freely choose. Not comparable imo.

          • Churbleyimyam@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            10 months ago

            Also sitting on the back of a flight animal is just perpetual torture.

            As the owner of a wyvern I can vouch for this.

  • ME5SENGER_24@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    10 months ago

    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

  • Smurfpiss@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    10 months ago

    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.

    • lloram239@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      27
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      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.

      • init@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Awesome informative reply. I’ve long wondered about how some creators get the same “face” in some insta accounts.

        • Advocado@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          That might be because they all go to the same plastic surgeon though.

          With the same requests.

          • init@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            10 months ago

            True, although I should have specified that I was talking about the computer generated models.

    • Mirodir@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      10 months ago

      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.

  • gorogorochan@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    ·
    10 months ago

    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.

      • gorogorochan@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        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.