These AI models are fake, but their creators fighting for $20,000 prize in AI beauty pageant

It’s insane how far AI is capable of constructing reality. It wasn’t too long ago that the controversial This Person Does Not Exist site arrived. It’s a place where you can get AI-generated pictures of random people by simply refreshing it, even though these images are still far from perfect with a few mishaps here and there.

But now, content creators are fighting over cash prizes in the AI beauty pageant. Their “AI influences” have amassed a combined millions of followers on social media, but they’re not real. They’re pixels. The cash prize in question? A whopping total of $20,000 (£16,000).

An exclusive report by the British publication Mirror details that the Fanvue World AI Creator Awards (WAICAs) are judging AI influencers based on their realism, reach, and technicalities. About some 10,000 AI creators have taken their parts in the competition, which has been running for months, and the winners will be announced by the end of June.

The final shortlist consists of AI beauties from India, Morocco, Romania, Turkey, France, and more. These “women” boast different backgrounds too: a Hijabi, a public speaker, a DJ, a mountain climber, a woman in motorsport, and that’s not the end. Some of them even have an OnlyFans-style subscription service.

“It’s enabling creative people to enter the creator economy with their AI-generated creations without having to be the face themselves. The judges have had their work cut out assessing all the entrants,” the AI company told the UK publication.

Fanvue is an all-AI platform where AI content creators can monetize their AI content, perhaps the biggest in the world of its kind. The AI girlfriend business is a real thing, and experts have predicted that it will reach a total valuation of $1 billion by 2024. It is dystopian indeed, not in a good way, but in a Spike Jonze’s Samantha in “Her” kind of way.

Ouch.