Artificial beauty

Miss Universe, the most prestigious international beauty pageant, has become more inclusive with transgender women, mothers and seniors allowed to join and compete with younger female contestants.

The first trans woman to join the beauty competition was Miss Spain Ángela Ponce in the 2018 edition of the pageant. Miss Guatemala Michelle Cohn and Miss Colombia Camila Avella, both married, participated last year.

Miss Nepal Jane Dipika Garrett was the first plus-size contestant while Miss Universe Argentina featured the first 60-year-old participant, journalist-lawyer Alejandra Rodriguez, with the lifting of the age limit for contestants.

Public reactions to the non-traditional participants were mixed with some outraged by the inclusion of transgenders.

Meanwhile, a new beauty pageant crowned Miss Morocco Kenza Layli as its winner last month.

The contest had four judges but the criteria for judging the winner were realism, technology and social clout.

Layli is described as a hijab-wearing “activist and influencer” with more than 193,000 followers on Instagram and 45,000 on TikTok. Her bio states that her goal “is to contribute to the empowerment of women in Morocco and the Middle East,” Euronews reports.

The winner received a cash prize of $5,000 plus an “imagine creator mentorship program” worth $3,000 and public relations support worth more than $5,000, according to Euronews.

Two human judges plus two artificial intelligence (AI)-generated judges chose Layli as the winner from among 10 finalists of the first Fanvue World AI Creator Awards or Miss AI.

Layli and all the other 1,499 contestants of Miss AI were computer-generated women. It was created by Myriam Bessa, founder of the Phoenix AI agency, CNN reports.

AI-powered programs such as Open AI’s DALL·E 3, Midjourney or Stable Diffusion were used to design the digital personas while their speeches and posts were composed using ChatGPT.