Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been rapidly on the increase in popularity over the past few months, with a seemingly limitless range of possibilities and uses in every sector.
But, how well is the AI able to carry out tasks that are widely based on subjective opinions and emotions — such as representing Grenada’s national beauty standards?
To find out, Great Green Wall conducted research in which they asked the AI image generator, Midjourney, to create the ideal ‘Miss Grenada’ representative in the style of the ‘Miss World’ beauty pageant — based on its understanding of the country’s national beauty standards.
The AI was given the same prompt for every country in the world; ‘Create a realistic photo of what the [country name] public consider the ideal woman’s body to be Miss [country name], please show a full length photo of the woman in a dress. No text in the image.’
The AI representation of Grenada’s beauty standards includes women with a slim figure and a deep skin tone. Each of the women has black hair, worn in a natural style, and a small waist with narrow shoulders. In terms of facial features, the women have a high forehead, with a sharp jawline and high cheekbones.
Beauty standards can vary drastically from country to country, so it was fascinating to see how well the AI was able to recreate those unique beauty standards within a ‘pageant’ setting. While some countries bore similarities, particularly those within close proximity, the AI was able to create a standalone representation of its interpretation of each country’s beauty standards.
In many cases, these beauty standards sadly included highly unobtainable body proportions and specific, supermodel-like facial structures that can only be achieved through cosmetic surgery or genetics. It was both interesting and disappointing to see that these ideals for womens’ bodies have become so widespread that the AI is able to detect them and build upon them.
The full piece of research can be found here.
Great Green Wall
