UnBeautiful
2024
“UnBeautiful” addresses the pervasive issue of female body misrepresentation in AI-generated imagery, particularly within large community-developed models that often depict women in excessively sexualized and fetishized manners, reflecting a narrow, male-dominated perspective. On platforms like civitai.com, approximately 80% of community-trained models showcase nudity or suggestive forms. My project seeks to reclaim the portrayal of women’s bodies, embracing their less idealized aspects and advocating for the acceptance of imperfections.
By fine-tuning several diffusion models with two hundred analog photographs from my personal collection, I juxtapose the reality of unfiltered, lomographic images against the AI’s deformed visions as it learns a new subject. This approach emphasizes the semi-authentic documentary value of its imagery and uses AI-induced glitches as metaphors for the inherent beauty of flaws.
In “UnBeautiful,” women are often depicted as broken, deformed, or transformed into geometric forms, challenging the stereotypical and unrealistic expectations of beauty. The project critiques the biases towards idealized depictions prevalent in AI training fields and invites viewers to reconsider beauty standards engineered by AI. This exploration serves as a critical commentary on gender, technology, and art, highlighting the subjective nature of beauty within digital spaces and questioning the ethics and impact of computer vision techniques.
Through this work, I aim to counteract the trends of synthetic beauty, offering a radical perspective that celebrates the imperfections of the female form. “UnBeautiful” encourages a broader conversation about representation, bias, and the future of digital creativity.
