Over the past year, I have shared ideas about female objectification with a cross-section of people using the popular AI text-to-image international community ‘art’ platform of which I remain a member (albeit somewhat reluctantly). And while pseudonyms and avatars can be misleading, over time I’ve learned how to identify the gender of most anonymous account holders I’ve interacted with in practice.
Which is how I came to the painful conclusion that most over-AI pinup girls are drawn by women.
In the context of object and self-object theory, this should not have been surprising. But it’s still fast. Why would any self-respecting woman want to perpetuate the centuries-old culture of gender bias that she too has fallen victim to?
Sadly, empirically based research suggests that she does so in pursuit of the social rewards and validation that come with successful intrasexual competition in all its complexity. This, in turn, is driven by a multitude of psychological and social factors that lead to the internalization of social norms embedded in women’s psyche from childhood. Plus one; Shelly Chen, Wijnand van Tilburg and Patrick Lemmon, Psychology of Women Quarterly)
AI easily taps into and exploits the text-to-image community ‘art’ platform I’m most familiar with.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this series of articles on the dangers of AI text-to-image ‘art’, the platform combines access to all the latest image models with chat rooms, competitions – and most aspects of ‘like-follow-commit’ social media culture. At X, these offerings are described as ‘addictive’. Which they are.
Convincing an ‘art’-producing model to aesthetically interpret one’s word sign is no mean feat – in a way that might attract ‘likes’, complimentary comments and ‘followers’ (or even win a contest). Sometimes the model and style chosen is right the first time. But usually, this process accumulates membership credits that can be redeemed for free but most often aren’t.
So, AI text-to-image ‘art’ is a dopamine-fuelled gamble.
This is why creating images of over-the-top women is so popular. ‘Boys will be boys’, so it stands to reason that many men on the platform love that sort of thing, and make no bones about it. And judging by the comments, many women out there thrive on the approval and admiration that comes with ‘creating’ a sexually charged image. Possibly with this in mind, the glamorous, ‘come hither’ look has been perfected to a tee – taking women’s objectivity to another level entirely, regardless of whether the subject is very understated or fully stripped.
Is it too much to expect women to stop reflecting and feeding this vicious cycle of self-destruction? Time will tell.