20 years after Mark Zuckerberg’s infamous ‘hot-or-not’ website, developers have learned absolutely nothing.
Two decades after Mark Zuckerberg created FaceMash, the infamously sexist “hot-or-not” website that served as the precursor to Facebook, a developer has had the bright idea to do the exact same thing—this time with all the women generated by AI.
A new website, smashorpass.ai, feels like a sick parody of Zuckerberg’s shameful beginnings, but is apparently meant as an earnest experiment exploring the capabilities of AI image recommendation. Just like Zuck’s original site, “Smash or Pass” shows images of women and invites users to rate them with a positive or negative response. The only difference is that all the “women” are actually AI generated images, and exhibit many of the telltale signs of the sexist bias common to image-based machine learning systems.
For starters, nearly all of the imaginary women generated by the site have cartoonishly large breasts, and their faces have an unsettling airbrushed quality that is typical of AI generators. Their figures are also often heavily outlined and contrasted with backgrounds, another dead giveaway for AI generated images depicting people. Even more disturbing, some of the images omit faces altogether, depicting headless feminine figures with enormous breasts.
According to the site’s novice developer, Emmet Halm, the site is a “generative AI party game” that requires “no further explanation.”
“You know what to do, boys,” Halm tweeted while introducing the project, inviting men to objectify the female form in a fun and novel way. His tweet debuting the website garnered over 500 retweets and 1,500 likes. In a follow-up tweet, he claimed that the top 3 images on the site all had roughly 16,000 “smashes.”
Understandably, AI experts find the project simultaneously horrifying and hilariously tonedeaf. “It’s truly disheartening that in the 20 years since FaceMash was launched, technology is still seen as an acceptable way to objectify and gather clicks,” Sasha Luccioni, an AI researcher at HuggingFace, told Motherboard after using the Smash or Pass website.
One developer, Rona Wang, responded by making a nearly identical parody website that rates men—not based on their looks, but how likely they are to be dangerous predators of women.
The sexist and racist biases exhibited by AI systems have been thoroughly documented, but that hasn’t stopped many AI developers from deploying apps that inherit those biases in new and often harmful ways. In some cases, developers espousing “anti-woke” beliefs have treated bias against women and marginalized people as a feature of AI, and not a bug. With virtually no evidence, some conservative outrage jockeys have claimed the opposite—that AI is “woke” because popular tools like ChatGPT won’t say racial slurs.
The developer’s initial claims about the site’s capabilities seem to be exaggerated. In a series of tweets, Halm claimed the project is a “recursively self-improving” image recommendation engine that uses the data collected from your clicks to determine your preference in AI-generated women. But the currently-existing version of the site doesn’t actually self-improve—using the site long enough results in many of the images repeating, and Halm says the recursive capability will be added in a future version.
It’s also not gone over well with everyone on social media. One blue-check user responded, “Bro wtf is this. The concept of finetuning your aesthetic GenAI image tool is cool but you definitely could have done it with literally any other category to prove the concept, like food, interior design, landscapes, etc.”
Halm could not be reached for comment.
“I’m in the arena trying stuff,” Halm tweeted. “Some ideas just need to exist.”
Luccioni points out that no, they absolutely do not.
“There are huge amounts of nonhuman data that is available and this tool could have been used to generate images of cars, kittens, or plants—and yet we see machine-generated images of women with big breasts,” said Luccioni. “As a woman working in the male-dominated field of AI, this really saddens me.”
This is beside the main point, but it jumped out at me and bothered me the instant I read it:
One blue-check user responded…
Who cares if they have a check or not? Any asshole can just buy one. Blue checks haven’t been “special” for a while now.
The article raises some important issues, but it’s undermining its own tone. Since the article is driven by moral indignation, why make special emphasis of a quote from someone who’s helping support Musk’s cesspool of hate?
For starters, nearly all of the imaginary women generated by the site have cartoonishly large breasts
That wasn’t my experience when I went there just now. I think maybe it learned from the author’s preferences more than the author realises.
I went there and clicked “pass” on everything and it generated a range of different body types of AI women. There were also way more heads without bodies than bodies without heads.
Nah, the first time I opened the website was after reading this comment. Spent a few minutes passing on every image with large breasts and it’s still the majority of them.
I actually did it a second time and eventually it stopped serving images, so my guess is it’s actually a shallow pool of images and it just shows them to everyone and takes the data, no adapting to results. That or the website got hug of deathed
Weird, that was my first time on it as well.
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If I follow your reasoning, blackface isn’t racist because it doesn’t involve real black people?
no, a generated image of a black person would not be racist in itself.
So your understanding of something like racism is that it can only be racism if it involves a live real human? What about racist fiction? I don’t think your idea of sexism or racism holds up…
is a generated image of a white person racist?
we haven’t discussed anything about the details of this theoretical image of a black person. in order for it to be racist, the very act of depicting a black individual would have to be a racist act in and of itself.now if the image somehow reinforces, or perhaps exemplifies, racist stereotypes, then perhaps it would be racist.
The details are literally women being objectified, and blackface. You have intentionally chosen to not read words to… What exactly are you trying to achieve here? Actually read the post and the comment you have responded to and think deeply about your rhetoric and the meaning and time you chose to dedicate.
someone tried to shift the narrative to racism, comparing generating ai images of women to wearing blackface, asking the above poster if they thought that wasnt racist. I don’t think these are in any way equivalent, or even related, so I provided an example i considered comparable, and asserted that that would not be racist.
I don’t try to shift the narrative, I use the same method than Simone De Beauvoir in The Second Sex to highlight a discrimination.
Generating the picture of a black person is not racist (the AI could have bias, but that’s an other subject). But generating pictures of persons in different skin tons on a website called apartheid.ai and making people vote “white or black”, that would be racist.
The problem here is not generating picture of women, but how these pictures are used.
We are certainly agreed that the circumstances surrounding and contained within an image impact the harm it does, be it racism or sexism or anything else.
Which begs the questions, do you know that the person you initially responded to was using hyperbole to draw out a point from the person they were responding to? Do you not care for analogy? Why did you choose to specifically not read the comment you were responding to to make a tangential point after being grilled for two additional comments to actually make your point?
The most charitable explanation to all of the above is that you’re here to win an argument, content and rhetoric or implications or literal interpretations of your comments text, be damned, despite otherwise actually (nominally) agreeing in no uncertain terms with the commenter you responded to negatively.
in order for it to be racist, the very act of depicting a black individual would have to be a racist act in and of itself.
Wait, are you implying that in order for this app to be sexist, the very act of depicting a female individual would have to be a sexist act in and of itself?
Because I don’t think the author of the article is arguing that, nor anyone in here.
no, not at all. but the other person who was arguing me seemed to be saying that they thought I was wrong for saying an ai generated image of a black person wouldn’t automatically be racist.
this app isn’t sexist because it generates images of women, it’s sexist (or not, since that’s what’s being debated) because it lets men (people) rate them, and perhaps because it seems to generate female images that overemphasise features that are considered to appeal to the male gaze.
personally, I’m unsure if I consider this app sexist. i would say that rating real women this way definitely is, but is it sexist to ask (your audience, or viewers) if a painting of a woman is attractive? even if it’s of a fictional woman? what if the intent is to appeal to people who are axially attracted to women? there’s a lot of pornographic art out there, is it sexist to make these images?
the sexist part here, if anything, seems to be giving people the opportunity to rate the fictional women, and as i said, I think it is sexist to do that to real people, so even if this app isn’t sexist per se, I’d still consider it bad if it encourages people to do that to actual women. but if people only behave that way in the context of the app, then I think it’s at worst harmless and possibly even beneficial, if it gives a harmless outlet for some urge which would otherwise be inflicted on real women.
I don’t think this situation is nearly as clear cut as most people seem to be taking it to be, in either direction.
I see what you’re saying. I think a better example to test what you are saying about real vs imaginary people would be if there was a realistic app where you whipped AI generated black people with a virtual whip and made them dance for watermelon.
Would that app be non racist simply because the depicted people are not real?
Would making the app/using the app be non-racist?
Note I’m not trying to say whipping people is equivalent to rating their looks. Obviously it’s not. I’m just making a thought experiment to unpack this idea that imaginary interactions can’t be -ist.
Sexism in fiction has been discussed for quite long time
But see they’re made up. If the characters aren’t real, who could possibly suffer the effects of media intentionally objectifying women or otherwise reducing a group of people into caricatured stereotypes- ohhhhhhhhhhhhh
This type of “party game” is still at it’s core objectifying women. They may be generated images but the whole project is aimed at passing judgement on women you would rate as fuckable or not. It’s encouraging behaviour that makes women feel uncomfortable or unsafe.
This type of objectifying isn’t exclusive to this project. Groups of men will rate and objectify women casually and frequently. I’ve worked in the trades and have been surrounded by such talk from men. The more normalized this type of behaviour is, the easier it is to consider women as less than human. Feeling like a replaceable tool with no sense of self or sense of worth is dehumanizing.
They could have chosen to base this project on just about anything else in our world. We have animals, nature, technology and so much more to try this kind of thing out on. Yet, what seems like another “tech bro” idea was focused on hyper sexualizing and objectifying women as if they were just another thing for men’s entertainment.
Simply, it’s gross behaviour. Just because they are generated images does not make it any less gross or acceptable. People are not objects for another person’s amusement and we should not encourage such behaviour.
This is like dunking on DeviantArt because it has artists who make cheesecake pictures of ladies. I’m not saying it’s something I personally enjoy, but who am I to tell others what art they should enjoy?
The only way for this to be consistent is if you believe authorial intent or real practical effects on an audience have no bearing on the properties of a piece of media.
As long as it’s fiction, it’s okay?
authorial intent
Unless the author writes an essay to accompany their piece, I think any conclusion you make about authorial intent is speculative. A beefcake pic of a guy in speedos lifting weights could be sexual, or maybe the artist is doing a study in human musculature? Heck if I know.
real practical effects on an audience
Effects on the audience, I’m not sure I understand that. It’s up to the audience to decide whether they like something, or not, or whether they are happy with whatever “effects” it has on them. The effect most are interested in is “pleasure”, I think. If one doesn’t like the pics, one is not in the audience for that art.
If one wants to make the argument that folks shouldn’t look at cheesecake or beefcake pics, because they create some sort of problem for the viewer, the onus is on the claimant to win the hearts and minds of the audience. As long as all parties are consenting adults making informed decisions, I don’t see the issue.
I do concur that it could be “sexist” in the same sense that anybody discriminating based on sexual preference is sexist, but I’m not sure that is wrong. Someone who prefers lady types as sexual partners may prefer to look at cheesecake pics of lady types, I guess, and that’s technically sexist because they’re choosing those pics based on lady characteristics.
Now if you want to argue that such pics have downstream effects on a vulnerable/disempowered population, that would be a different argument.
Someone who prefers lady types as sexual partners may prefer to look at cheesecake pics of lady types, I guess, and that’s technically sexist because they’re choosing those pics based on lady characteristics.
We have no control over who we are attracted to sexually (or not at all), but we do have control over how we interact with the world. Who you are attracted to cannot be sexist, racist, etc. because there is no intention - it merely is. Being attracted and choosing to objectify someone are two very distinct processes because one involves intention. Discrimination is also an act of intent.
choosing to objectify someone
What “someone” is being objectified in this case?
I’m merely explaining why it is not analogous and why attraction cannot be considered bigoted. Anything that involves intent can be criticized for bigotry if it is present.
That’s fair. Thank you.
downstream effects on a vulnerable/disempowered population, that would be a different argument.
That is literally the argument in question about this whole post. 🤦
Your rant about not being able to do any rhetorical analysis without an author spelling it out for you is really not my problem. Maybe don’t criticize it if you have no practice doing it in the first place.
Your willful misunderstanding of how objectification in fiction can ever be any more problematic than “discrimination based on sexual preferences” is just… Wow.
I can only respond to the complaint you made:
authorial intent or real practical effects on an audience
… not the one you imagine you made.
To be clear, I disagree with this:
not being able to do any rhetorical analysis without an author spelling it out for you
To clarify, I don’t think the author’s intent really matters in art. If one is interested in context, then it’s a useful context.
In this case, the images have no “author”, they’re a machine output, so I’m not sure how you think authorial intent figures in this.
EDIT: My mistake, I’m mixing up responses. I should further clarify that, in the case of cheesecake/beefcake pics on DeviantArt (the example I gave), there clearly is an author/artist. But ultimately I’m still not sure it matters what their intent is. Do they like drawing lingerie as an artistic subject, or do they like drawing ladies for sexual titillation? I’m not sure there is any moral imperative on the viewer to care.
I’m curious now if vegans get mad at lab grown meat for similar reasons.
Jumping into the feminism community to challenge a fairly core tenant of feminism is a bad take. I’m removing this because it was a comment made clearly in bad faith. You’re expected to be nice on our instance, do better in the future.
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Not the case at all, enjoy a 14 day ban. Try thinking about what you did wrong.
I’m just curious if we could collect demo data on the raters and have that train the generation algorithm. Could we find regional, statistically significant differences in aesthetic preferences? Would we be able to trace the cultural influence of different groups by their preferences?
Do some groups prefer specific shapes/sizes/colors? What’s the most predictive feature of perceived attractiveness across different groups?
I dunno, sounds like some interesting research into the visual aspect of attraction and also implicit biases.
I think I may have participated in research like this once. It collected a lot of demographic data on me and then I had to rate a bunch of people and in the next section make value judgements about whether each of a series of people looked like they were likely to be smart, trustworthy, bad tempered etc. It was all on a timer.
Besides “pure” Psychology, Aesthetics research is dealing with such kind of questions and has been going on for a while.
This does not only encompass visual features in humans to which people feel some form of attraction, but also stuff like music or visual art.
It’s not my field and it has been some time since I read good literature on this, which is why I am not giving you any possibly erroneous summaries. But I am sure that this has been investigated and is still a topic of active research. So you can take my comment as a pointer.
First hit, when searching for: “cultural differences in visually appealing facial features”
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960982221003523
Have fun researching and reading.
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What a dumb article, it reads like a few women feeling inadequate and threatened by fictional ones.
What is even the point? That it enforces an increasingly superficial society? Go on Tinder for five minutes and you will get that experience in full and then some, just with real people instead of fictional ones.
I think it sounds more like a bunch of men feeling threatened by the fact that women find being attracted to imaginary women a pretty big turn off.
And this human being here is the prophet of all female human beings and can speak in behalf of all of them. I myself find it a big turn off for a person to be so insecure about what defines them as attractive, besides their visual appearance.
I find it unattractive to use logical fallacies like ad hominem to try to attack someone because of feeling threatened. But I do find it amusing when such fallacies fall so short. I don’t care if I’m attractive to you. I have much more important things to be. Being unattractive to people who would find AI attractive is something I’m rather proud of. It means I’m doing something right.
Fortunately for one of us, insecurity actually isn’t one of my faults, or my feelings would be almost as hurt as yours seem to be.
I dont feel threatened at all. Im just saying its dumb to speak in behalf of all women when it is just your opinion. And your double standards are also interesting. When you tell the world, what you consider a turn off but can’t handle it for me to say the same.
Essentially it is exactly the proof against what you were saying: Even though I might find people sexually attractive from a visual impression, overall attraction to a person is way more nuanced.
I have a last question for you: Do you also have the same disgust towards people who would say that the girl with a pearl earring, or any other painted or drawn person is attractive?
Point out where I spoke for all women?
I can perfectly handle you saying what is a turn off to you. I just told you I’m glad to be a turn off for you, if you think sheer physical appearance is enough to be attracted.
I’m moving on from this conversation, now. Your emotions are getting in your way here, and I’m not interested in playing Whack-a-Mole on your straw men.
Point out where I spoke for all women?
About there:
the fact that women find being attracted to imaginary women a pretty big turn off.
I originally posted the following comment as a reply to another comment that has now been removed. I’m reposting it as I think it still has value to the current conversation under this post.
This type of “party game” is still at it’s core objectifying women. They may be generated images but the whole project is aimed at passing judgement on women you would rate as fuckable or not. It’s encouraging behaviour that makes women feel uncomfortable or unsafe.
This type of objectifying isn’t exclusive to this project. Groups of men will rate and objectify women casually and frequently. I’ve worked in the trades and have been surrounded by such talk from men. The more normalized this type of behaviour is, the easier it is to consider women as less than human. Feeling like a replaceable tool with no sense of self or sense of worth is dehumanizing.
They could have chosen to base this project on just about anything else in our world. We have animals, nature, technology and so much more to try this kind of thing out on. Yet, what seems like another “tech bro” idea was focused on hyper sexualizing and objectifying women as if they were just another thing for men’s entertainment.
Simply, it’s gross behaviour. Just because they are generated images does not make it any less gross or acceptable. People are not objects for another person’s amusement and we should not encourage such behaviour.``
This is really just a symptom of people seeing women as objects or as a collection of features. I try to see the positive, at least it’s not photos of actual people. But it is a sad outlook on our society.
at least it’s not photos of actual people
Just a side note: Those are generated based on a data set of real people on which the AI methods are trained on. It is – to some degree and with specific AI models – possible to reconstruct the original photos of the training set. This has risen a lot of concerns; privacy among those.
See, e.g.: https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.13188
The website is smashorpass.ai
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It would be nice if men learned that attraction doesn’t have to mean objectification, and that real women are way better than a cobbled together Frankenstein “perfect” monster woman.
I mean, 99% of these men would have zero chance with a woman half as attractive. They seriously need to start figuring out what WOMEN find attractive instead of wasting their time with empty fantasies if they want to get a real relationship someday.
I really don’t like this idea that “men should figure out what women find attractive”. This goes against the idea of being natural - it puts useless pressure on men who are not able to find a partner, as the implicit message is really “You could not find a partner because you don’t know what women find attractive”.
I mean, if I were to say the same sentence but with the roles reversed “women should figure out what men find attractive” you would most probably call me a sexist. See the problem?
Here is what all men should know : attractiveness is a matter of taste. As long as the guy is healthy and respectful, eventually he will find someone. Knowing that, he should get confident and not be afraid to propose dates.
Yeah, I can see how it would be really hard for men to share a small amount of the same kind of pressure that women have been put under.
You imply that men are soft compared to women. Don’t you find that sexist?
My personal take: misogynism should never be tolerated. Same for misandry, because it is no better than misogynism. We should strive for gender equality and treat each others as equals (including non-binary genders).
Saying how men are inferior or worse than women is never constructive or even helpful against the patriarchy. On the contrary it might even fuel the hate in some persons. That’s what I think anyway.
Where did I once compare men to women, or say they were inferior? Every comment called out a pattern of behavior, which pattern is the topic of the article.
You did so right here :
Yeah, I can see how it would be really hard for men to share a small amount of the same kind of pressure that women have been put under.
If you did not mean to imply that men are inferior to women in regards to pressure then I do not know what you meant
I was summarizing what YOU said. Good bye.
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But the application does not ask you whether or not you find the woman attractive
It asks you whether you want to “smash” her. The same word could be used for a sex doll recommendation application. That’s objectification
The same word could also be used to evaluate if you should kill an insect, so what’s the point? It is a short form for: “Do you find given appearance sexually attractive, or not?” That term would be a bit long for a button, wouldn’t it?
In that context that word is clearly meant as a synonym to “bang”, “fuck” or penetrate. Definitely not to crush an insect
There are several words that would be suited to say “you find her attractive”. Like “love” or “like” or just a heart emoticon. No need to have a paragraph on that button
The point is not that it is bad for men to find any real or AI generated women hot. That’s totally fine. What’s problematic is portraying women as objectified (i.e. stripping them of their position as subjects that also have needs and wants) and utterly absurd hypersexualized alterations of what real people look like. This sends the message to everyone (and heterosexual men in particular) that women don’t have any personality, no needs or desires of their own as well as forming a very detached idea of what real women actually look like. I would think that this is why we see things like the incel community because they are very much detached from other human beings, i.e. women. So sure, these “women” who are being ranked aren’t actually real women. But that doesn’t make the representation of hypersexualized bodies of women less real. The difference is that we don’t need to exploit any real people for this. But this website is still participating in shaping our image of what women are. Like porn, where you see a lot of actors doing stuff they would most probably not do if it weren’t their job. Still, porn has brainwashed most people into a very different idea of sex, what human bodies look like, how they are supposed to perform and that women have no will, no desire of their own.
No, that’s you projecting. This isn’t men finding women attractive. It’s men finding a bunch of pixels on a screen attractive. They aren’t real women. If someone is attracted to something that isn’t real, or to nothing more than an appearance, that’s a problem. And someone else has every right to find that a major turn-off.
If that’s what male sexuality is, male sexuality is kind of disgusting. I, personally, think that’s NOT intrinsic to men, and that men can be better and more interesting than that.
If you have ever printed a photo of your SO, haven’t you ever thought “Yeah they are pretty on that photo” ?
How would it be any different for men who look at a picture of a women ? No matter the medium used (ink, pixels…).
Yeah, these pictures do not come from real people. But they do remain pictures. If you look at AI generated images of beautiful landscape, you will still find those landscapes to be beautiful although they have been generated by AI.
The looks is one of the possible drive for sexuality. It’s probably the most obvious and most accessible one. Now there is a big gap between sexual desire and serious relationships - people can find someone to be sexually desirable (as in, they probably wouldn’t say no to a sexual experience assuming they are free to do so) and yet not want to get in relation with them
I think we should not be rejecting our sexual impulses. We have all the right in the world to find people to be sexually beautiful or not. It’s best to accept it than to say “Stop it ! It’s bad to like a woman because of her curves!”. However, we should be aware that our impulses are just that - impulses- and that it should never become obsessive ; and we must always remain respectful of the other persons, including their privacy (it would be disrespectful to stare openly at someone just because we find them pretty)
The difference is that a photo of my SO represents a real person in my life. I’m affected by their wants, imperfections, needs and humanity.
It’s not bad to like a WOMAN. It’s bad to equate a fantasy with a woman, and have a hard time differentiating between them.
I see your point but to me that’s no different than finding movie stars pretty or find a character from a comics to be hot. It even happened to me to find the character of a book to be hot - although there’s no picture, just text. And, honestly, I don’t see how that’s bad.
No, what is bad in that app is not that men get sexual feelings for AI images. What is bad is that there’s this big button “smash” that objectifies women, effectively treating the gender like sex dolls. It also doesn’t help because these images are surreal - with features that women do not have in general. If you train your brain to pick up on these fake pics with big breasts, you will perhaps also be selective in real life and find nobody.
That’s the two biggest problems I see with that app. But I don’t find anything wrong about liking an AI picture by itself.
Replied to the wrong comment. sry
Um. THESE AREN’T WOMEN.
So you’re saying men aren’t allowed to find women attractive that are objectively more attractive then them?
conventionally attractive women
Exactly that propagates and fosters what “conventionally attractive” implicates and imposes unrealistic or unhealthy expectations upon women. Properties, which are completely natural, are considered “ugly”, e.g. hair on legs, arms and arm pits or a “normal” and perfectly healthy amount of body fat. Women start developing severe mental health issues from a young age and - in extreme cases - risk their lives by trying to fit those images.
This is, however, not only a problem of AI generated images alone, but a problem of society and media in general.
Furthermore this is not just the case for women, but also for men. Although it is more prevalent with women, if I am not mistaken about the numbers, and has a history almost as old as humanity itself.
