- cross-posted to:
- feminism@lemmy.ml
- cross-posted to:
- feminism@lemmy.ml
20 years after Mark Zuckerbergās infamous āhot-or-notā website, developers have learned absolutely nothing.
Two decades after Mark Zuckerberg created FaceMash, the infamously sexist āhot-or-notā website that served as the precursor to Facebook, a developer has had the bright idea to do the exact same thingāthis time with all the women generated by AI.
A new website, smashorpass.ai, feels like a sick parody of Zuckerbergās shameful beginnings, but is apparently meant as an earnest experiment exploring the capabilities of AI image recommendation. Just like Zuckās original site, āSmash or Passā shows images of women and invites users to rate them with a positive or negative response. The only difference is that all the āwomenā are actually AI generated images, and exhibit many of the telltale signs of the sexist bias common to image-based machine learning systems.
For starters, nearly all of the imaginary women generated by the site have cartoonishly large breasts, and their faces have an unsettling airbrushed quality that is typical of AI generators. Their figures are also often heavily outlined and contrasted with backgrounds, another dead giveaway for AI generated images depicting people. Even more disturbing, some of the images omit faces altogether, depicting headless feminine figures with enormous breasts.
According to the siteās novice developer, Emmet Halm, the site is a āgenerative AI party gameā that requires āno further explanation.ā
āYou know what to do, boys,ā Halm tweeted while introducing the project, inviting men to objectify the female form in a fun and novel way. His tweet debuting the website garnered over 500 retweets and 1,500 likes. In a follow-up tweet, he claimed that the top 3 images on the site all had roughly 16,000 āsmashes.ā
Understandably, AI experts find the project simultaneously horrifying and hilariously tonedeaf. āItās truly disheartening that in the 20 years since FaceMash was launched, technology is still seen as an acceptable way to objectify and gather clicks,ā Sasha Luccioni, an AI researcher at HuggingFace, told Motherboard after using the Smash or Pass website.
One developer, Rona Wang, responded by making a nearly identical parody website that rates menānot based on their looks, but how likely they are to be dangerous predators of women.
The sexist and racist biases exhibited by AI systems have been thoroughly documented, but that hasnāt stopped many AI developers from deploying apps that inherit those biases in new and often harmful ways. In some cases, developers espousing āanti-wokeā beliefs have treated bias against women and marginalized people as a feature of AI, and not a bug. With virtually no evidence, some conservative outrage jockeys have claimed the oppositeāthat AI is āwokeā because popular tools like ChatGPT wonāt say racial slurs.
The developerās initial claims about the siteās capabilities seem to be exaggerated. In a series of tweets, Halm claimed the project is a ārecursively self-improvingā image recommendation engine that uses the data collected from your clicks to determine your preference in AI-generated women. But the currently-existing version of the site doesnāt actually self-improveāusing the site long enough results in many of the images repeating, and Halm says the recursive capability will be added in a future version.
Itās also not gone over well with everyone on social media. One blue-check user responded, āBro wtf is this. The concept of finetuning your aesthetic GenAI image tool is cool but you definitely could have done it with literally any other category to prove the concept, like food, interior design, landscapes, etc.ā
Halm could not be reached for comment.
āIām in the arena trying stuff,ā Halm tweeted. āSome ideas just need to exist.ā
Luccioni points out that no, they absolutely do not.
āThere are huge amounts of nonhuman data that is available and this tool could have been used to generate images of cars, kittens, or plantsāand yet we see machine-generated images of women with big breasts,ā said Luccioni. āAs a woman working in the male-dominated field of AI, this really saddens me.ā
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It would be nice if men learned that attraction doesnāt have to mean objectification, and that real women are way better than a cobbled together Frankenstein āperfectā monster woman.
I mean, 99% of these men would have zero chance with a woman half as attractive. They seriously need to start figuring out what WOMEN find attractive instead of wasting their time with empty fantasies if they want to get a real relationship someday.
I really donāt like this idea that āmen should figure out what women find attractiveā. This goes against the idea of being natural - it puts useless pressure on men who are not able to find a partner, as the implicit message is really āYou could not find a partner because you donāt know what women find attractiveā.
I mean, if I were to say the same sentence but with the roles reversed āwomen should figure out what men find attractiveā you would most probably call me a sexist. See the problem?
Here is what all men should know : attractiveness is a matter of taste. As long as the guy is healthy and respectful, eventually he will find someone. Knowing that, he should get confident and not be afraid to propose dates.
Yeah, I can see how it would be really hard for men to share a small amount of the same kind of pressure that women have been put under.
You imply that men are soft compared to women. Donāt you find that sexist?
My personal take: misogynism should never be tolerated. Same for misandry, because it is no better than misogynism. We should strive for gender equality and treat each others as equals (including non-binary genders).
Saying how men are inferior or worse than women is never constructive or even helpful against the patriarchy. On the contrary it might even fuel the hate in some persons. Thatās what I think anyway.
Where did I once compare men to women, or say they were inferior? Every comment called out a pattern of behavior, which pattern is the topic of the article.
You did so right here :
If you did not mean to imply that men are inferior to women in regards to pressure then I do not know what you meant
I was summarizing what YOU said. Good bye.
No you were clearly not. But this discussion goes nowhere so I agree to leave it at that.
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But the application does not ask you whether or not you find the woman attractive
It asks you whether you want to āsmashā her. The same word could be used for a sex doll recommendation application. Thatās objectification
The same word could also be used to evaluate if you should kill an insect, so whatās the point? It is a short form for: āDo you find given appearance sexually attractive, or not?ā That term would be a bit long for a button, wouldnāt it?
In that context that word is clearly meant as a synonym to ābangā, āfuckā or penetrate. Definitely not to crush an insect
There are several words that would be suited to say āyou find her attractiveā. Like āloveā or ālikeā or just a heart emoticon. No need to have a paragraph on that button
The point is not that it is bad for men to find any real or AI generated women hot. Thatās totally fine. Whatās problematic is portraying women as objectified (i.e. stripping them of their position as subjects that also have needs and wants) and utterly absurd hypersexualized alterations of what real people look like. This sends the message to everyone (and heterosexual men in particular) that women donāt have any personality, no needs or desires of their own as well as forming a very detached idea of what real women actually look like. I would think that this is why we see things like the incel community because they are very much detached from other human beings, i.e. women. So sure, these āwomenā who are being ranked arenāt actually real women. But that doesnāt make the representation of hypersexualized bodies of women less real. The difference is that we donāt need to exploit any real people for this. But this website is still participating in shaping our image of what women are. Like porn, where you see a lot of actors doing stuff they would most probably not do if it werenāt their job. Still, porn has brainwashed most people into a very different idea of sex, what human bodies look like, how they are supposed to perform and that women have no will, no desire of their own.
No, thatās you projecting. This isnāt men finding women attractive. Itās men finding a bunch of pixels on a screen attractive. They arenāt real women. If someone is attracted to something that isnāt real, or to nothing more than an appearance, thatās a problem. And someone else has every right to find that a major turn-off.
If thatās what male sexuality is, male sexuality is kind of disgusting. I, personally, think thatās NOT intrinsic to men, and that men can be better and more interesting than that.
If you have ever printed a photo of your SO, havenāt you ever thought āYeah they are pretty on that photoā ?
How would it be any different for men who look at a picture of a women ? No matter the medium used (ink, pixelsā¦).
Yeah, these pictures do not come from real people. But they do remain pictures. If you look at AI generated images of beautiful landscape, you will still find those landscapes to be beautiful although they have been generated by AI.
The looks is one of the possible drive for sexuality. Itās probably the most obvious and most accessible one. Now there is a big gap between sexual desire and serious relationships - people can find someone to be sexually desirable (as in, they probably wouldnāt say no to a sexual experience assuming they are free to do so) and yet not want to get in relation with them
I think we should not be rejecting our sexual impulses. We have all the right in the world to find people to be sexually beautiful or not. Itās best to accept it than to say āStop it ! Itās bad to like a woman because of her curves!ā. However, we should be aware that our impulses are just that - impulses- and that it should never become obsessive ; and we must always remain respectful of the other persons, including their privacy (it would be disrespectful to stare openly at someone just because we find them pretty)
The difference is that a photo of my SO represents a real person in my life. Iām affected by their wants, imperfections, needs and humanity.
Itās not bad to like a WOMAN. Itās bad to equate a fantasy with a woman, and have a hard time differentiating between them.
I see your point but to me thatās no different than finding movie stars pretty or find a character from a comics to be hot. It even happened to me to find the character of a book to be hot - although thereās no picture, just text. And, honestly, I donāt see how thatās bad.
No, what is bad in that app is not that men get sexual feelings for AI images. What is bad is that thereās this big button āsmashā that objectifies women, effectively treating the gender like sex dolls. It also doesnāt help because these images are surreal - with features that women do not have in general. If you train your brain to pick up on these fake pics with big breasts, you will perhaps also be selective in real life and find nobody.
Thatās the two biggest problems I see with that app. But I donāt find anything wrong about liking an AI picture by itself.
So youāre saying men arenāt allowed to find women attractive that are objectively more attractive then them?
Replied to the wrong comment. sry
Um. THESE ARENāT WOMEN.
Exactly that propagates and fosters what āconventionally attractiveā implicates and imposes unrealistic or unhealthy expectations upon women. Properties, which are completely natural, are considered āuglyā, e.g. hair on legs, arms and arm pits or a ānormalā and perfectly healthy amount of body fat. Women start developing severe mental health issues from a young age and - in extreme cases - risk their lives by trying to fit those images.
This is, however, not only a problem of AI generated images alone, but a problem of society and media in general.
Furthermore this is not just the case for women, but also for men. Although it is more prevalent with women, if I am not mistaken about the numbers, and has a history almost as old as humanity itself.