CNN
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The judges of the world’s first AI beauty contest announced the 10 finalists last month, and the first Miss AI was selected.
Meet Kenza Leyli, a Moroccan lifestyle influencer who aims to bring “diversity and inclusivity” to the world of AI creators. With nearly 200,000 followers on Instagram and another 45,000 on TikTok, Leyli’s images, captions, and buzzword-filled acceptance speeches are all generated by AI.
“Being selected as Miss AI has further motivated me to continue my work towards the advancement of AI technology,” Leili said in a video of her speech. “AI is not just a tool. It is a transformative force that can disrupt industries, challenge conventional wisdom, and create opportunities that did not exist before. Going forward, I will work hard to promote diversity and inclusion in the field so that everyone has a seat at the table for technological advancement.”
Fanvue World AI Creator Awards
In her AI-generated speech, winner Kenza Leili said she wanted to promote diversity.
The inaugural Miss AI contest kicked off in the spring, with around 1,500 AI programmers from around the world applying, according to organizers at Fanvue, an influencer platform for both AI and human creators. Raylee was created by Phoenix AI agency founder Miriam Bessa. Bessa will receive a $5,000 prize, support at Fanvue and a spokesperson to help raise Raylee’s profile. Runners-up were French AI contestant Larina Varina and Portugal’s Olivia C.
Virtual influencers, like the peppy Southern California “robot” Lil Miquela or pink-haired Japan resident Ima, are nothing new, but many of the “older” generation are built to look more human, crafted by teams of copywriters and art directors. This wasn’t the case for the contestants, whose images were created exclusively using programs like Open AI’s DALL·E 3, Midjourney, and Stable Diffusion, and their speech and posts generated by programs like ChatGPT.
On her Instagram page, Leili expresses her love for the color red, advises her followers to “invest in yourself every day,” attends expert conferences to share ideas, and supports her country’s (unnamed) sports team.
Ahead of this week’s announcement, contest organizers said participants would be judged not only on their appearance, but also on their creators’ use of AI tools and social media influence. AI contestants had to answer questions similar to those in real-life human contests, such as, “If you could have one dream to make the world a better place, what would it be?”
Fanvue World AI Creator Awards
The runner-up was Olivia C. from Portugal.
Fanvue World AI Creator Awards
The runner-up was Larina Varina of France.
Judges included AI influencer Aitana Lopez and pageant historian Sally Ann Fawcett, who told CNN last month that they were looking for contestants “with a powerful, positive message.”
But experts have also raised concerns about the impact of AI beauty pageants, as stylized AI-generated images could further homogenize beauty standards.
“I think we’re starting to lose more and more of our understanding of what an unedited face looks like,” Dr. Kelly McInerney, a researcher at Cambridge University’s Leverholm Centre for Future Intelligence, told CNN in a video interview after the finalists were chosen. (Of the competition’s 10 finalists, the hijab-wearing North African avatar Leili was an outlier.)
“These tools are built to replicate and amplify existing patterns in the world,” McInerney added. “Even though they’re marketed as tools to enhance creativity, they’re not necessarily built to challenge existing patterns. So when it comes to beauty norms, these tools take existing beauty norms that are sexist, fatphobic, colorist, and then edit and repeat them.”
