A new singularity has arrived. For centuries, scientists, philosophers and James Cameron movies have speculated about a technological event horizon: the moment that artificial intelligence overtakes the puny minds that birthed it and establishes a new world order, typically slated to end in global war and the enslavement of humanity. Fortunately for the human race, the latest technological leap doesn’t involve robots’ superior ability to think, fight, or undermine its enemies, but rather their capacity to make straight men horny.
At least, that’s the narrative emanating from certain corners of the internet. “It is so over,” one Twitter user gushed in a viral post this month that showcased an assortment of women entirely generated by AI – each one defined by small waists, childlike facial features, and large breasts. The images are made to look like real photographs, with some of the “women” holding their hands aloft as if to indicate that the picture is a selfie. But these women don’t exist. Or, at least, they only exist as a collage of real faces and bodies previously fed into the AI to teach it what an attractive woman supposedly looks like. The only tell that they’re computer-generated is often an amusing inability to render fingers and hands accurately. It evokes the anatomical detail of a child’s notepad scribbles as much as a celebrity pin-up.
