There is a worrying trend of gorgeous AI models being created – and it’s setting harmful expectations for women.
Take Milla Sofia, for example. The blonde bombshell has thousands of followers on Twitter, where she describes herself as a "19-year-old from Finland"
But if you look a little closer, you'll hopefully realise the images are a bit too good to be true – as in her bio, she admits to being a "virtual girl" who's "made by AI".
READ MORE: 'I identify as a real life sex doll – being plastic truly is fantastic'
And she isn’t the only AI model development taking the internet by storm, as the DreamGF website is allowing people to fulfil their ultimate fantasies by creating the "perfect girlfriend".
We spoke to Danae Mercer, a journalist and public speaker, who has previously spoken out about the harmful expectations AI is creating.
“I absolutely think AI is changing beauty standards to a dangerous degree,” she exclusively told Daily Star.
“It’s creating unrealistic beauty standards – and we are only going to see more of it.
“I think women of my generation, we will be ok. It will suck a bit but we’ve had time to figure out how to deal with different beauty ideals.
“But I think for teenagers and children, it’s a whole different game. They’re going to be faced with incredibly smart technology building idealised versions of perfect girls – like what we are already seeing happening on Instagram and Twitter.”
Danae said the creation of AI girls and women is a worrying – and creepy – internet trend that only seems to be growing.
Where previous generations had to navigate models in magazines, her concern is that children are going to have to compete with computer-created ‘perfection’ across their social platforms.
Danae continued: “Now we are seeing AI ‘thirst traps’ with ‘real’ social lives.
“What I mean by that is we have accounts that use AI to create stunningly beautiful women, who then ‘do’ all sorts of things: they go to the beach, they go to Greece, and most of all, they wear bikinis. For me, this feels really ominous.
“These girls, I think, will quite quickly become the new beauty standard. Especially with their growing online followings and their ‘real’ online lives. That feels really heavy to me.
“My generation had to navigate models in magazines. This generation has to navigate some of the smartest technology that has ever been created.”
Danae also commented on her concerns with companies like Levi who are starting to use AI to diversify their offerings.
Later this year, the brand will begin testing AI-generated clothing models in an effort to expand the legendary denim company's online shopping experience.
The initial announcement sparked outrage, prompting Levi's to clarify its use of AI to encourage diversity a few days later.
It also raised the question of how many real models would be impacted by the experiment.
“While it doesn’t feel as ominous as the thirst traps, it feels weird,” Danae said.
“It’s taking jobs away from real models while simultaneously giving technology the power to create beauty standards.
“And then we have new AI beauty filters like TikTok’s glamour filter. These new filters use digital learning to not break in the way we are used to seeing.
“So when you wave a hand in front of your face or cover your mouth, the filter sticks. Which means it’s so much harder to tell they’re not real.”
While Dane doesn’t know how to solve this issue, which is only going to be more prevalent, she does know we need to be informed.
She said people need to be careful and aware of what they see online.
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“I think one of the dangers with AI is it’s increasingly hard to tell what’s real and what’s fake – and it’s going to become more so,” she shared.
“Already a lot of the thirst trap AI models just look like filtered edited real-life women. If they didn’t announce that they were pretend, it would be almost impossible to know.
“So how can you tell? Look at the hands. AI still really struggles to get those right. Also just trust your gut. We humans have a good feeling for ‘uncanny valley’ – for things that feel almost right but something is a little off, a little strange.
“Its intuition meets technology. And we are going to need to lean into that a lot more these days.”
You can find out more about Danae by visiting her website.
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