"I'm sure you guys have noticed I'm a pretty private person."

April 24, 2018 7:44 AM

"Lil" Miquela Sousa is a Spanish-Brazilian American model and musician from Downey, California who was recently featured in a V Magazine editorial spread. Her Instagram account, @lilmiquela, has more than a million followers. Miquela's selfies show her wearing designer clothes, posing with other models, musicians and activists -- and she even launched Prada's Instagram Gifs last fashion week. But there's just one catch: Lil Miquela is not a human being.

Miquela is being called fashion's first computer-generated influencer.

A recent account hacking stunt revealed the truth behind one of the worst kept secrets on the internet.

posted by zarq (90 comments total)

Lots of links in this post. If don't want to go through them all, the two articles under "Lil Miquela is not a human being" and "account hacking stunt" give a good rundown.
posted by zarq at 7:46 AM on April 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

The Butlerian Jihad is gonna be great
posted by Going To Maine at 8:00 AM on April 24, 2018 [29 favorites]

Miquela is being called fashion's first computer-generated influencer.

*ahem*
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:04 AM on April 24, 2018 [12 favorites]

I've never seen these images before; I would have assumed if I had seen them in situ that it was either a marketing ploy, a long con, performance art, or a post-modern ouroborosian hot take on Instagram culture. So cool to see that it was all of the above⸘
posted by seanmpuckett at 8:05 AM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

Expect this to be hushed up and dismissed as a goofy joke. Nothing is more dangerous than the masses without the illusion of hope in the status quo. Once it gets out that computer-generated images of cool, aspirational young people are far superior influencers than actual real young people, and the masses of millennials see that the thin, precarious ladder out of crushing debt doesn't even exist, no matter how much debt they get into on designer clothes, how hard they crush their workout sessions or how good they make their selfies, there will be a revolution. There will be blood and avocado goo.
posted by acb at 8:13 AM on April 24, 2018 [9 favorites]

Shane Dawson on youtube has been talking about Lil Miquela for a while. He talks to "her" on the phone in this video.
posted by phunniemee at 8:19 AM on April 24, 2018

"First"
posted by sukeban at 8:20 AM on April 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

Miquela is being called fashion's first computer-generated influencer.

Perfect Model: Gorgeous, No Complaints, Made of Pixels [NYT 5/6/01]:

Then there is Webbie Tookay, the latest lithesome discovery of John Casablancas, the founder of Elite Model Management, which shaped the careers of Cindy Crawford and Naomi Campbell. Webbie exists only in cyberspace, the creation of a Swedish animator named Steven Stahlberg, but that didn't hinder her from posing for a feature in Details in October, 1999, and a new Nokia phone advertising campaign in Latin America.

References Max Headroom, who I think may have the real claim to the title.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:21 AM on April 24, 2018 [7 favorites]

BRUD BLUE.
posted by Index Librorum Prohibitorum at 8:26 AM on April 24, 2018

Max Headroom was more like the inverse of this: An actor pretending to be a virtual person.
posted by ardgedee at 8:26 AM on April 24, 2018 [10 favorites]

I'm just relieved she isn't someone's super-realistic sex-doll.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 8:26 AM on April 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

If she is computer generated, she's not really a musician, is she? More like an instrument.
posted by Dysk at 8:28 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

References Max Headroom, who I think may have the real claim to the title.

Except that Max Headroom wasn't actually 100% computer generated, but simply Matt Frewer wearing heavy makeup in front of an animated backdrop, overlaid with standard video effects.

(on edit, what ardgedee said)
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:28 AM on April 24, 2018 [7 favorites]

Max Headroom wasn't actually 100% computer generated

In fact he was 100% not computer generated. Even the supposedly CG backgrounds in Max Headroom were faked.
posted by Dysk at 8:29 AM on April 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

Calling on Baudrillard and Debord only makes Baby Žižek cry.
posted by octobersurprise at 8:29 AM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

I'm just relieved she isn't someone's super-realistic sex-doll.

It's only a matter of time
posted by dudemanlives at 8:30 AM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

She reminds me a lil of a less skinny Posh Spice. Maybe? Like Faux Spice?
posted by pracowity at 8:30 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

As the articles note, virtual celebs have been around for quite a while, and some brands have used animated or digital avatars to hawk products. The point I think they're making is that this is a supposedly independent instagram influencer with a large number of followers who appears to be partnering with clothing designers in the same way most human social media influencers do.
posted by zarq at 8:36 AM on April 24, 2018

If she is computer generated, she's not really a musician, is she? More like an instrument.

That's an interesting point! If a computer creates a work of art or piece of music, is it only an instrument, or a creator? Neither? Both?

Because this is a project by a company and they seem to be making up a fictional narrative about her, it's really hard to pick out truth from fiction. Some of the articles in this post say Miquela is an AI and the company calls her that. But there's no way to determine the truth right now.

--

In other news, Brud just received $6 million in funding.
posted by zarq at 8:42 AM on April 24, 2018

Soooo...They purposely made the character noticeably in Uncanny Valley because being CG/AI is the whole point...right? Because, otherwise, I find it hard to believe anyone would think this is an actual person.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:45 AM on April 24, 2018 [10 favorites]

see also: Hatsune Miku

both are reflections of the same corporate moneymaking machine that conveniently gets rid of that pesky individuality that results in unwanted political stances, non-normative lifestyles, and large royalty payments that can only be negotiated by an irreplaceable human artist and not by a digitally crafted image with a hidden, easily replaceable team behind it
posted by runt at 8:48 AM on April 24, 2018 [8 favorites]

Because, otherwise, I find it hard to believe anyone would think this is an actual person.

Well if you cf. to someone like James Charles who is a real actual alive not fake person but between makeup and facetune doesn't look too far out of the uncanny valley himself...

Instagram is a weird place, man.
posted by phunniemee at 8:49 AM on April 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

Hatsune Miku has been a pop idol for years, and has been touring since 2009.
posted by adamrice at 8:49 AM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

It's just a cartoon character. This "Lil" Miquela Sousa is qualitatively no different from Tony the Tiger, except that it probably has less weird pornography made about it.
posted by The Gaffer at 8:50 AM on April 24, 2018 [9 favorites]

Soooo...They purposely made the character noticeably in Uncanny Valley because being CG/AI is the whole point...right? Because, otherwise, I find it hard to believe anyone would think this is an actual person.

Then again, Bjork just released her tenth album and I'm still not certain if she's a real person.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:50 AM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

That's an interesting point! If a computer creates a work of art or piece of music, is it only an instrument, or a creator? Neither? Both?

That is an interesting question, but in not sure it's pertinent here. If the marketing company behind all this had found a way to make a computer independently generate/write music (with vocals and lyrics no less!) of the kind that's attributed to this construct, they'd have some AI advances worth more than Instagram Influence™.

If there is any input from the supposed AI at all, it's as a composition tool for a human. I doubt there's even that. Programming/sequencing a vocal synth is not conceptually different to programming/sequencing any other synth.
posted by Dysk at 8:50 AM on April 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

Apparently it's fairly easy to run into Björk in Reykjavík. Though that leaves open the question of whether Iceland is a real place.
posted by acb at 8:51 AM on April 24, 2018 [8 favorites]

Soooo...They purposely made the character noticeably in Uncanny Valley

Most real models have homes in the Uncanny Valley zip code. Bitsy and her infinite and eternal brothers and sisters are going to put a lot of real models out of work very soon.
posted by pracowity at 8:52 AM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

Also, the Instagram-age concept of “influencer” bears thinking about. “Influencer” is “celebrity” reduced to behaviourist instrumentalism. An influencer is a tool with one purpose: to influence, to get susceptible people to spend their disposable income (or, in some case, their time) in a particular way. An influencer, in other words, is like the mechanical hare on a rail at the edge of a greyhound racing track. As such, it stands to reason that machines should do the job better and more consistently than mere fallible humans.
posted by acb at 8:55 AM on April 24, 2018 [23 favorites]

But there's just one catch: Lil Miquela is not a human being.

I look forward to the day when this means that the individual in question is an eldritch horror and not cgi.
posted by poffin boffin at 8:56 AM on April 24, 2018 [20 favorites]

Would I rather have evil brain washing for the purposes of driving consumption be led by humans or AI ? tough call, tough call.
posted by some loser at 8:57 AM on April 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

If she is computer generated, she's not really a musician, is she? More like an instrument.

So are most human models, aren't they? Not to the same degree, but if her location, hair, makeup, clothes, expression, and pose are executed exactly according to instruction, and then the pictures are edited down to perfect little fictions, how much agency does a human model have?
posted by pracowity at 9:00 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Because this is a project by a company and they seem to be making up a fictional narrative about her, it's really hard to pick out truth from fiction. Some of the articles in this post say Miquela is an AI and the company calls her that. But there's no way to determine the truth right now.

I think we can say with a fairly high degree of certainty that "she" isn't an AI.

But aside from the fact that the technology exists to achieve a high degree of figurative photorealism and that social media platforms enable a kind of flipbook storytelling, how is Miquela Sousa any different from any other invented advertising mascot/logo, be they Mr. Clean, Tony the Tiger, or the Jolly Green Giant?
posted by octobersurprise at 9:02 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

I can't believe that fashion companies are getting in on this. Cellphones/food/cars/whatever where a person is actually a liability sure, but if it comes out that fashion is digital, then I can see the brand value dropping. We may not like it, but fashion is a 'thing' because real people are wearing it. If that illusion breaks, I don't see the outcomes being positive for fashion brands.
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:05 AM on April 24, 2018

I look forward to the day when this means that the individual in question is an eldritch horror and not cgi

There's a difference there?
posted by I_Love_Bananas at 9:11 AM on April 24, 2018

This "Lil" Miquela Sousa is qualitatively no different from Tony the Tiger, except that it probably has less weird pornography made about it.

Give it time.
posted by praemunire at 9:12 AM on April 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

both are reflections of the same corporate moneymaking machine that conveniently gets rid of that pesky individuality that results in unwanted political stances, non-normative lifestyles, and large royalty payments that can only be negotiated by an irreplaceable human artist and not by a digitally crafted image with a hidden, easily replaceable team behind it

I can't speak to the large royalty payments and negotiations, but as far as "unwanted political stances and non-normative lifestyles," you might wanna click on a link to one of the articles in the post. Also, Wikipedia: "She also has Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts and has used her platform to support socially minded causes including Black Lives Matter, feminism, Muslim and refugee advocacy organizations, transgender rights, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, gun control, My Friend's Place, Black Girls Code, Planned Parenthood, and protests of the Dakota Access Pipeline."

And from her Instagram profile: "*~ MIQUELA ~* 🍒 [e-mail] | Black Lives Matter"
www.blackgirlscode.com/donations.html
posted by zarq at 9:15 AM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

how is Miquela Sousa any different from any other invented advertising mascot/logo, be they Mr. Clean, Tony the Tiger, or the Jolly Green Giant?

because in our modern context, these mascots are silly - we're all in on the marketing anthropomorphism and 50 years on these logos have picked up other signifiers than the ones they were initially created for

a completely novel, photorealistic human is a fresh take on this and there is not yet a culture-wide criticism of this particular symbol's signifiers - who created it? for what purpose? in contrast to? which means?

like any marketing ploy, it's an evolving disease that nobody really has the vaccine to
posted by runt at 9:16 AM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

We may not like it, but fashion is a 'thing' because real people are wearing it. If that illusion breaks, I don't see the outcomes being positive for fashion brands.

Dunno. Fashion magazines through the early part of the 20th century relied on illustrations, not photographs.
posted by octobersurprise at 9:17 AM on April 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

When I first saw this FPP it got me thinking about how people who would otherwise never be caught dead buying clothing that they would admit to themselves are purely for decoration or for social status can be willing to throw hundreds or thousands of real-world US dollars for costume pieces for their in-game avatars.

For the time being, these decorations are locked to the games they're parts of (therefore, eventually obsoleted), and more or less exclusive to the set of people who enjoy fighting with or against other people online. Large-scale open worlds kind of lived and collapsed with Second Life, which still feels like a good idea in the form of an experiment in the form of a still-halfassed dotcom operation. Maybe someday personal avatars will be wearing expensive virtual dresses blockchain-signed to prove their authenticity and provenance, but somebody's got to figure out how to get the right people into online hangouts and make it a normalizable sort of exotic experience.
posted by ardgedee at 9:17 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

The freckles are obviously fake although she does have a convincing un-emotive blank expression/thousand-yard-stare, just like all the real models do...
posted by littlejohnnyjewel at 9:19 AM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

And oh yeah, apropos virtual tastemakers, Kizuna AI has been serving that role in Japan for at least a year and a half, pulling enough attention internationally to have inspired dozens of virtual Youtuber wannabes.
posted by ardgedee at 9:20 AM on April 24, 2018

how is Miquela Sousa any different from any other invented advertising mascot/logo, be they Mr. Clean, Tony the Tiger, or the Jolly Green Giant?

Mr. Clean, Tony the Tiger, and the Jolly Green Giant are quite obviously cartoon porn stars.

Miquela Sousa looks (almost) real, she ("she") is posed in real situations with real people, and her owners are pretending she is real, aren't they? She might not be 100 percent convincing, but she is close enough that you know you're going to be fooled soon.
posted by pracowity at 9:22 AM on April 24, 2018

Yeah I'd like to grumble about how there's nothing new here and to get off my lawn but I'm not allowed to do so by terms of the reverse mortgage I just bought from Ananova.
posted by 7segment at 9:22 AM on April 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

a completely novel, photorealistic human is a fresh take on this and there is not yet a culture-wide criticism of this particular symbol's signifiers - who created it? for what purpose? in contrast to? which means?

Kyoko Date is from 1996 and was as photorealistic as technology allowed back then. We only have more polygons and textures now. One year previously, William Gibson had made up a virtual idol for his book Idoru. It's really a not so fresh take.
posted by sukeban at 9:30 AM on April 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

See also Aimi Eguchi.
posted by sukeban at 9:32 AM on April 24, 2018

Season 3 of Westworld is shaping up quite nicely it seems.
posted by Fizz at 9:32 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

From The Cut article:

On Friday, Brud shared its own side of the story on Instagram. “We’re a small team of artists, engineers, roboticists, and activists operating with the belief that technology can help bring about both a more empathetic world and a more tolerant future,” the company explained in a post.

Brud then went on to reiterate the same (weird, fictional) tale about Cain Intelligence creating Lil Miquela to be a “servant and sex object,” and how Brud saved her from that tragic fate. “It troubled us more than we could ever possibly express to think that such a miraculous breakthrough would be used for the sick fantasies of the 1 percent,” Brud added.

I mean, you assholes wrote this fiction that she was created as a sex object. Ergo, you fuckers are the ones who decided she would be "used for the sick fantasies of the 1 percent." Hard to square that one with a more empathetic and tolerant future. Ugh on this whole saga.
posted by Existential Dread at 9:40 AM on April 24, 2018 [11 favorites]

I ran into this a few days ago on Facebook. It's really jarring to read the articles and how they breathlessly talk about how real she looks, and then you see the photos, and she's clearly CGI.

From the writing, you'd think she'd be one of those composite images, where they average the features of multiple people to make a face that could be anyone, but isn't any specific person.

But no, she's a very obvious CGI face that wouldn't look out of place in the latest Final Fantasy.

Are fashion writers really that unfamiliar with what real people look like? How could anyone mistake Lil Miquela for a real person?
posted by explosion at 9:50 AM on April 24, 2018 [8 favorites]

Nothing but respect for *my* first computer-generated influencer.
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:50 AM on April 24, 2018 [8 favorites]

So are most human models, aren't they?

I'm not sure they're relevant to the musician/instrument (as in musical instrument) dichotomy really, unless they sing (in which case they're musicians, regardless of their agency in composition and production).
posted by Dysk at 9:57 AM on April 24, 2018

Are fashion writers really that unfamiliar with what real people look like?

I'm pretty sure the fashion industry as a whole is unaware of what real people look like, are shaped like, and what they want out of clothing.
posted by Foosnark at 9:57 AM on April 24, 2018 [8 favorites]

Dunno. Fashion magazines through the early part of the 20th century relied on illustrations, not photographs.

That seems more like a technical limitation that once surpassed was no longer acceptable judging by the number of illustrations in current fashion mags. But who knows?
posted by The_Vegetables at 9:58 AM on April 24, 2018

I was wondering that too, explosion. I mean, I guess I could be convinced that it was a human made up to look computer generated, and maybe she looks less fake when glancing at a small phone screen, but she doesn't appear to be even particularly cutting edge CGI quality?
posted by tavella at 10:10 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

How could anyone mistake Lil Miquela for a real person?

Well, it's a lot harder to write breathless prose about the hyperreal Baudrillardian singularity when your subject looks like a Final Fantasy character.

But who knows?

Yeah. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ But Miquela is basically a highly advanced illustration "herself," not to mention the fact that fashion photography has been so subject to retouching and post-processing that it almost might as well be illustration for decades. (Cecil Beaton, one of Vogue's earliest "name" photographers practically made his career out of his talent for retouching.) IMO, if there's anything new here, it's the effort put into the surrounding backstory(s) and the available channels to microcast those stories.
posted by octobersurprise at 10:19 AM on April 24, 2018

Reading through the Highsnobiety article, and all of a sudden, the fact that Donald Trump is POTUS hits me like a cartoon anvil.

Hyperreality indeed.
posted by slipthought at 10:23 AM on April 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

Yeah, it's completely bizarre that they're talking about these illustrations as if this character looks like a real person. This looks like something that could have been generated over a decade ago. And it looks like they haven't even animated it? All of the images are static. And the photoshop is garbage; the angle of illumination on "Lil" is all wrong in just about every photographic composite. I've seen better fanart.

I kind of feel like I'm being trolled?
posted by mr_roboto at 10:33 AM on April 24, 2018 [5 favorites]

Oh, and now they've apparently ginned up a Trump-based publicity stunt. Outrage equals engagement.
posted by mr_roboto at 10:36 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Maybe I'm just not plugged in enough to the Instagram world or whatnot, but I used to read quite a few makeup blogs and their photos certainly didn't look like uncanny-valley digital creations -- despite a lot of them being, for example, cybergoth makeup nerds wearing light-up fiber-optic wigs or whatever. These on the other hand -- some of the linked images look fine, but others look straight out of an SFM poster. A polished one, sure, but an SFM poster nonetheless.
posted by inconstant at 10:46 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

It's true that this character doesn't really look like a real person, but neither do many of the human people shown on magazine covers after a photo editor has had their way with them. To me, the interesting piece of this is where Miquela's real-unreality bumps up against the manufactured unreality of a human's representation.
posted by yomimono at 10:47 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Lil Miquela is not a human being.

Or, alternatively, she is a whole bunch of people working together.
posted by Squeak Attack at 10:50 AM on April 24, 2018

How could anyone mistake Lil Miquela for a real person?

I think she doesn't look that far off from how actual human models end up looking after the various feature enhancements and flaw erasures are done to their photos.
posted by poffin boffin at 10:52 AM on April 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

Not really true, at least for the photos I looked at. Heavily photoshopped models can look fake, but they look fake in a different way. Miquela looks specifically like computer game art.
posted by tavella at 10:56 AM on April 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

Like this photo does not look like anything else than computer generated. I'm sure a clever makeup artist could reproduce the tells and thus make a human look that way too, of course, but it's not an image that I would mistake for anything natural.
posted by tavella at 10:58 AM on April 24, 2018

Yeah, like... even laboring under illogical beauty standards, I don't see any reason a magazine would photoshop someone's eyes into blank voids. And the skin texture just looks wrong. It doesn't look "too smooth" or whatever. I know "too smooth" -- lots of touched-up cosplay photos or heavily made-up photos look "too smooth". The skin in this case just looks not like skin.
posted by inconstant at 11:00 AM on April 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

Not really true, at least for the photos I looked at.

i mean? i assumed that by saying "i think" it would be obvious that it was my personal opinion and not a statement of undisputed fact. it's okay that we see things differently.
posted by poffin boffin at 11:04 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh, and now they've apparently ginned up a Trump-based publicity stunt. Outrage equals engagement.

Just an fyi, the story this link is based on is in the post under "account hacking stunt."
posted by zarq at 11:04 AM on April 24, 2018

Maybe the real Miquela was the friends we made along the way!
posted by praemunire at 11:12 AM on April 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

Or, alternatively, she is a whole bunch of people working together.

All she needs to do is incorporate, then she could be a person.
posted by Foosnark at 11:19 AM on April 24, 2018 [4 favorites]

I think she doesn't look that far off from how actual human models end up looking after the various feature enhancements and flaw erasures are done to their photos.

This is one of the more interesting aspects of the story to me, and a reason why I made the post. The Highsnobiety article discusses it a bit, too. Products are sold every day across all sorts of media using false images. Models and celebrities don't normally look the way they do in magazines, online and on television. Their skin tone, texture, hair, features, faces and bodies are often photoedited and altered in drastic ways. The article notes that in real life, Big Macs never look the way they do in a McDonalds commercial. We're being sold products by images and representations that don't actually exist. Feature enhancements and flaw erasures are part of that package.

Miquela isn't simply how realistic (or not) her features are. She's selling, as are many instagram influencers, a lifestyle that doesn't exist. For the moment, her account has been cleared of many of its older images, but it includes and included images of her at art gallery openings, museums, restaurants, beaches and boardwalks, and at parties. She's in images with musicians, models and activists and at least one author. There are images of her wearing half a dozen different brands. All of this is a kind of branding, and it's odd and fascinating. But it's also not particularly different than a human model whose features have been heavily altered with makeup or photoediting, wearing all of those clothes.

Comments made on many of her posts show that at least some of the people who made them thought she was a robot. Not a cgi creation. They saw through the facade, but still thought she was physically real and wearing those clothes.

I think there are larger lessons that are related to how realistic or unrealistic she looks. Lessons about how we perceive the world, the ways companies sell products to us and the nature of reality. Lessons about the way the fashion industry hawks their wares, teen and adult body image and acceptance, too.
posted by zarq at 11:25 AM on April 24, 2018 [6 favorites]

The article notes that in real life, Big Macs never look the way they do in a McDonalds commercial. We're being sold products by images and representations that don't actually exist.

"It's plump, juicy, three inches thick. Look at this sorry, miserable, squashed thing. Can anybody tell me what's wrong with this picture?"

posted by octobersurprise at 11:38 AM on April 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

This makes me think of "The Girl Who Was Plugged In." Obviously, the technology is different, but the advertising/influencer angle is what I'm thinking of.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:40 AM on April 24, 2018 [2 favorites]

The talk about the realness or not of the face reminds me of this article Vice posted last year. Yeah, it's transparently fake, in a "early 00s pre-rendered CGI intro" fashion. However, it's has some of the same features as the heavily edited fashion shoots or selfies with beautification filters (or even your regular fuzzy low-end android camera), like the ultra-smooth skin and unnatural colours.


Like this photo does not look like anything else than computer generated.
This photo looks like a reverse LA Noire, where the pretty good face tech was betrayed by PS2-level geometry on clothing.
posted by lmfsilva at 11:52 AM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Oh, and now they've apparently ginned up a Trump-based publicity stunt. Outrage equals engagement.

They have one good line in there: "The CGI avatar for Bermuda is much less realistic, at about the level of Tomi Lahren."
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:04 PM on April 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

Yeah, it's transparently fake, in a "early 00s pre-rendered CGI intro" fashion. However, it's has some of the same features as the heavily edited fashion shoots or selfies with beautification filters (or even your regular fuzzy low-end android camera), like the ultra-smooth skin and unnatural colours.

I think this is the heart of it- there’s always been a great deal of artificiality in fashion images. Game-engine graphics have just become relevant enough to the biennale crowd that they made the small lateral jump from airbrushing their planned imperfections to rendering them.
posted by q*ben at 12:14 PM on April 24, 2018

Hatsune Miku has been a pop idol for years, and has been touring since 2009.

On the topic of Japan, there's also yuru-chara like Kumamon. He's met Keanu Reeves. From what I recall, yuru-chara are more than promotional mascots and are treated as real characters.
posted by FJT at 12:23 PM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

But no, she's a very obvious CGI face that wouldn't look out of place in the latest Final Fantasy.

Reminded me most strongly of FKA Twigs' vid for 'Water Me'.
posted by FatherDagon at 12:30 PM on April 24, 2018

Loving the idoru slapfight. Even in the virtual world, Wheaton's Law doesn't apply. Virtual person politics! I LOVE IT!
posted by Samizdata at 1:06 PM on April 24, 2018

Serious question:

Why is it so hard to get teeth right in CGI? And what exactly is it about them that seems so off?

It's not just this character. It's also video games and "photorealistic" CGI animation. The teeth are often so weird even when the rest of the face might be really impressive. Is this something that animators talk about with each other?

(*Although, there is often an uncanny valley element to the face as a whole, especially in media where the features have been made smooth, symmetrical, and tiny to conform to some lowest-common-denominator "no flaws" idea of attractiveness. E.g. see the limited facial structures allowed to female characters in a lot of media.)
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 1:07 PM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

I mean, is she just a Poser figure, or whatever the software company call themselves these days? That's what I am assuming she is.
posted by Windigo at 1:32 PM on April 24, 2018

Why is it so hard to get teeth right in CGI? And what exactly is it about them that seems so off?

Other than being hard to model well, given the small size, is that you can't just slap a texture and call it a day. It requires a few layers of texture and calculations of brightness, reflection and bump mapping. Without that, they end up looking as unnatural as those awful teeth extreme whitening jobs that look like fake plastic dracula fangs or chiclets.
It's the same as the dead, dead eyes, although that's a body part that has seen a lot of research put into and there were considerable developments over the past 15 years or so.
posted by lmfsilva at 1:50 PM on April 24, 2018 [3 favorites]

This picture, they really tried to put in skin imperfections, though they make it look even more uncanny. But the eyes, they are dead, dead, dead.
posted by ojemine at 2:45 PM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Wait'll she hooks up with The Arrow Collar Man.
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 3:02 PM on April 24, 2018 [1 favorite]

Wait'll she hooks up with The Arrow Collar Man.

Hathaway Shirt Man will fight him.
posted by rhizome at 4:06 PM on April 24, 2018

the hair is also a huge giveaway here. the shadows under the bang lines are not right at all
posted by scose at 5:48 PM on April 24, 2018

her eyes don`t look natural
posted by Masiekoe at 12:10 AM on April 25, 2018

Winner of the 2018 Award For Most Ridiculous Fucking Use Of The Term AI For Something That Is Nothing Of The Sort
posted by GallonOfAlan at 2:07 AM on April 25, 2018 [3 favorites]

As the tech improves, I'm sure we'll see an increasing number of ad bots built to pose as people on various social media platforms.

The very first thing that any bot that can pass the Turing test will be used for is advertising on TweetGramBook or whatever platform is popular at that time.

It's going to be like spam all over again. Right this second building photorealistic human models is damn hard, so much so that this one didn't even bother trying to really go for a fully human look. Similarly you've got to have actual human beings writing "her" lines.

In a few years though that won't be the case and it'll be cheap to churn out dozens, hundreds, thousands, millions, of distinct but entirely human looking bots that can appear in video or still photos and look just like a human model.

Chatbot tech also keeps improving.

And then? Why then your GramFaceTwit will be flooded with seemingly human accounts set for both quick advertising and the long con style of ad. Quick advertising would be more immediately annoying but less harmful in the long term. If you get video featuring a seemingly human person popping up urging you to drink brand whatever soft drink well, bleh but ok.

Its the longer term con that's going to really cause problems. They'll pose as people, possibly for months or even years, to get credibility on the site they're on and the people they interact with, then later start subtly trying to steer the people who think they're people towards products and services.

How will people react when they can never be sure if the people they've been dealing with online are really people, or just sleeper bots waiting to start ads. It's the sort of thing that you need a refreshing Coke™ to deal with.
posted by sotonohito at 7:01 AM on April 25, 2018 [1 favorite]

No mention of Gorillaz in here yet? Hmm...
posted by gucci mane at 6:54 PM on April 25, 2018

Season 3 of Westworld is shaping up quite nicely it seems.
Alfred Jingle Machina
posted by unliteral at 10:00 PM on April 25, 2018