At the request of The Bulimia Project, an artificial intelligence produced its idea of the “perfect” man and woman. All based on data available on social networks.
The Bulimia Project, an eating disorder awareness group, asked an artificial intelligence (AI) to define a male and female ideal. This is based on the most popular trends on social networks.
The researchers thus realized that the ideal woman should have blond hair, brown eyes and a slim figure. For his part, the perfect man is a tall dark brunette, sporting chiseled cheekbones and a beautiful musculature. Notable fact: both must have olive skin.
To confirm its findings, The Bulimia Project posed the same query to three image-generating AIs. Dall-E 2, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney. The group members do not know how the AIs came to this conclusion. Indeed, these only provide a result and do not reveal their working method.
Nevertheless, the association advances the hypothesis that AIs take into account interactions with photos uploaded to social networks. Including likes, comments and number of searches.
According to the report by The Bulimia Project, more than 40% of the portraits generated showed unrealistic images, carried by the filters of use on social networks.
However, these same standards are capable of havoc, particularly among the youngest. In 2019, a study from the University of Montreal looked at the long-term impact of social networks on body image. For four years, the research team followed 4,000 adolescents, aged 12 to 16, throughout their secondary education. The results show that these teenagers spend, on average, more than 9 hours online per day and increasingly show symptoms of depression. Most of them lack self-confidence in the face of the injunctions of the virtual world.
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