Featured Image Credit: Aitana Lopez/Instagram / Amy Everhart/Instagram
Beauty pageants might now be considered a little old-fashioned, but they still exist all over the world - and a new addition to that roster is probably the most modern yet.
The Miss AI pageant is skipping past humans entirely, instead holding a competition for AI women, generated entirely by AI and competing across a range of categories.
It also won't be a closed competition - held by creator platform Fanvue, anyone can apply. All you have to do is attach an image of your AI-generated competitor, and then answer a fairly long list of questions.
Some of these questions will be pageant-style, aimed at the AI-generated women to see how their chatbots of choice answer, but others will be more prosaic, checking in on how they were generated, and also how much of a following they've generated.
Social media clout will apparently be a big factor, including how much revenue the AI-generated woman has managed to make for its creator so far.
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On top of that, though, part of the judging process will just be a microscopic look at that generated image to see how credible it truly is. After all, so many AI-generated images look really impressive at first glance but break down the more attention you pay them.
Fanvue says that it will be paying particular attention to the models' eyes and hands, which are areas that AI software has historically struggled to get quite right.
All of this might sound like a little bit of a chore, but when you consider there's $20,000 in prize money on the line, it'll doubtless attract plenty of entries.
The sort of software that can generate images like this has exploded in popularity in the last couple of years - things have progressed to the point where AI-generated personalities are now pretty common on social media.
So, in some ways, this pageant is just a recognition of that fact, although it's still fairly trippy to consider the amount of time and effort that will go into it.
Even more eerily is the judging panel. While there are some actual humans - including Sally-Ann Fawcett, a beauty pageant historian and author - there are also some AI judges, like Aitana Lopez. Lopez is a Spanish model with over 300k followers on Instagram - you might recognize her, with her vibrant pink hair - all made with AI.
Fanvue co-founder Will Monange told the MailOnline.com that he hopes that these events will "become the Oscars of the AI creator economy".
