AI slop is proliferating on social media at an alarming rate. Images are generated and disseminated with political agendas, particularly in right-wing spheres. These AI-generated images often depict soldiers, sad children, or interior designs. Of particular note are the catfishing-style “I need a husband” posts featuring women with impossible proportions, ostensibly seeking partners. These chimeric creations are bot-driven posts designed to farm engagement, but they also offer a chilling glimpse into AI-driven beauty standards and the lack of diversity in AI-generated women.
These posts reflect a mechanical view of the male gaze. However, an AI cannot truly comprehend the male gaze, and in its attempt to mimic it, it creates beings beyond understanding. This research project aims to analyze the patterns in these images, explore posting methods and engagement, and examine the meaning behind the images. It will culminate in an artistic piece critiquing both the images and their creation and dissemination methods.
By rendering these AI-generated images as classical Greek statues through Gaussian splatting and 3D printing, we aim to create a visual commentary on the intersection of AI, beauty standards, and the male gaze. This artistic approach not only highlights the absurdity of these digital constructs but also invites viewers to critically examine AI’s role in shaping contemporary perceptions of beauty and gender roles.
LoRA generated images
The artwork I am working on problematicizes this relationship between real and fake, the generated chimeric women and the relationship between classical sculpture and fascism. I am training a Learn On Reconstruction and Attention model, also known as a LoRA on this AI slop and set up a production line, where the figures are generated as marble sculptures, made into 3D models and then 3D printed and pushed aside on a conveyor. A grotesque mimicry of generative AI churning out slop but tied to the concept of fascist fascinations with marble sculptures and the inherently misogynistic way these images are generated and disseminated over periods of time. These works are both a product of the algorithmic gaze and a method for subverting it.
this work is intended to be shown as a series of monitors leading to a 3D printer. This shows the progress of evolution of this figure from generation to 3D model, to 3D printer.
The grotesquerie is deliberate, and the plastic relates not just to the plastic nature of the generated images, but also to the fragility and toxicity of plastic and fascism. Ideally some of these will be sintered stone works, a ridiculous monument to generative AI fascism and fakery, clearly wrong, clearly strange, calling to mind the algorithmic gaze and how perfection is an impossible concept. These works subvert the male gaze by being deliberately unappealing, raising questions about the ethical implications of using AI to manipulate and control the human form. AI derives its power from the collective choices of users, creating a bottom-up dynamic that makes it more difficult to regulate and control. The artworks show the problems of letting these continue unchecked, challenging the ideas of perfection. Generative AI and fascist ideals both promote a narrow and potentially harmful vision of human perfection, fascist ideals were aspirational, while AI beauty standards are presented as attainable through technology, making their impact potentially more insidious. This work subverts those ideas of perfection, challenging what perfection means to us and to a world inundated by generative AI.
AI Slop
AI slop, a term coined in 2024, refers to the rapid proliferation of low-quality images and text generated by AI, particularly on social media. These images, which can range from house interiors to bizarre and disturbing scenes, are monetized by creators based on popularity. Popular celebrities and trends are often associated with these images, and captions like “why don’t pictures like this ever trend?” are common. Disturbingly, there is a steady stream of generated women, many of which are catfishing scams, conforming to Western beauty standards. However, there is also a related series of posts “seeking a husband,” where all the generated women have flawless pale skin, large eyes, and improbably curved bodies. Generative AI has previously created extraneous body parts, but in this case, the proportions are exaggerated to produce images of women that are not only improbably perfect but literally impossible. These women often have extra sets of anatomy, extra heads, breasts, legs, leading to a troubling glimpse into beauty standards in the age of generative AI. This research explores the proliferation of this style of AI slop, AI bias, and its impact on beauty standards. This paper compares the exaggerated idealization of form in Italian futurism and Nietzsche’s Übermensch to fascist fascinations with neoclassical sculpture. It also examines right-wing accounts that interact with AI slop and comment on these posts. This proliferation is problematized as an artwork that generates AI slop as marble statuary, 3D printed as impossible figures, critiquing hubris and highlighting the artificiality and potential harm of AI-generated beauty standards. The plastic disposability of the figures contrasts with the marble aesthetic, exposing the kitsch underbelly of AI slop.
My research questions for this project are What can these bizarre images tell us about Generative AI, bias and beauty standards?What can AI slop tell us about the relationship between the Avant Garde, kitsch and fascism?
The Algorithmic Gaze and Beauty Standards in the age of AI
The algorithmic gaze is a term used to describe how AI can use its inbuilt biases to perpetuate and even amplify the objectification of women. It’s an extension of the male gaze, a concept coined by film critic Laura Mulvey to explain how traditional visual media often present women as passive objects of male desire.
The Male Gaze highlights the power dynamics in looking, where women are often reduced to objects of male scrutiny. AI algorithms, learning from biased data, unintentionally reproduce and exaggerate gender and beauty biases in their output. Algorithmic Bias refers to how AI’s biases manifest in women’s depictions, perpetuating objectified and stereotyped representations.
The Algorithmic Gaze and “Impossible women”
I analyzed AI beauty standards by testing 100 Midjourney generations of a woman’s photo. The results revealed a clear bias towards paler skin, young, thin, white, feminine, cisgender, able, and beautiful women. I assessed the images by sight, using the Fitzpatrick skin scale to avoid racial challenges. The bias was evident, with the greatest representation in the under-20 and 20-25 age ranges. Some images were overly artistic, making it difficult to discern specific details. To improve the analysis, I plan to use a more finely tuned prompt and test with other image generation systems.
The generated women seeking husbands all have similar features, except for being impossibly thin. They are generally pale-skinned, Eurocentric beauties with a focus on both the algorithmic and male gazes, which is startling. These images are horrific chimeras of sexualized body parts in a down-to-earth setting. Some cater to specific fetishized interests, which I won’t discuss. I’m drawn to these images of women with caterpillar bodies, multiple limbs, and heads. They represent the AI’s extreme attempt to cater to the male gaze, losing the concept of humanity. The comments are telling. Some are bots or fake posters, while others are humans. I found Trump fans, right-wing churches, clueless elderly people, and mocking comments. Under non-mocking human-appearing posts, there’s usually a request for a private message or a link to websites. I avoided those links because I’ve already compromised my algorithm and don’t want to be phished. These images suggest a troubling idea of algorithmic perfection beyond human idealism. Kitsch algorithmic creations driven by an avant-garde need for progression and acceleration constantly search for the next advancement.
Fascist Fascinations
Greek and Roman statuary, captured in marble, embodied godlike perfection. Fascist governments lauded these edifices for celebrating purity, whiteness, and idealized forms. Mussolini’s pallazo della Civilta Italiana, with its 28 travertine marble statues, exemplified this. Nietzsche’s Übermensch, centered on an idealized vision of human potential achieved through willpower and morality, epitomized this concept, often linked to physical prowess and racial superiority, and used to justify violence and discrimination. AI’s new idealizations of Eurocentric beauty and perfection, akin to those of Mussolini and Hitler, mirror these exclusions. AI slop has found a home in right-wing circles, with idealized forms of Trump, the IDF, and sensationalized natural disasters emerging. Generative AI, with its kitsch and avant-garde nature, combines the two to create a pastiche. Clement Greenberg proposed that kitsch is schlocky and cartoonish, opposing avant-garde modernism. However, John Gantz argued that fascism is inherently both avant-garde and kitsch, making it difficult to separate the two. At its core, AI slop and propaganda are closely intertwined, making it a prime target for exploitation by fascists.
“Fascism is always both: avant-garde and kitsch, and it’s difficult to fully divorce one side from the other. The avant-garde abstraction into attractive notions like “power” as such obscures just how ugly and stupid power really looks like in practice” (Ganz 2022)
During the recent election we not only saw ridiculous propaganda of trump, but slandering deep fakes of Harris and right wing reactions to generated images around hurricane Helene. The prevailing thought was that the truth or reality of the image didn’t matter, it was the sentiment, the feelings evoked, which mattered the most. This typifies the propaganda view that the truth is less important than the feeling. “Y’all, I don’t know where this photo came from and honestly, it doesn’t matter. . . . I’m leaving it because it is emblematic of the trauma and pain people are living through right now,”
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