The artificial intelligence that dresses women

From great power comes great responsibility. The strength and purpose of something depend on who wields it. A very powerful tool in the wrong hands can potentially cause more damage than an atomic bomb. Potentially revolutionary inventions are also potentially destructive. Sometimes, however, depending on who uses them, they are also simply misogynistic. What are we talking about? Many things and clichés drawn from movies and comics, but also about how artificial intelligence, especially that used to generate or modify images, has entered the so-called "battle of the sexes," which more than being a battle is a street brawl where women's fault lies in wanting to be autonomous and able to decide for themselves, and men's reaction is to throw themselves on the ground and start crying, clench their fists, and exercise violence and domination in various ways.

AI porn: artificial intelligence that undresses

Every day, on social media but especially on Twitter - which, since its change in management, seems to have completely abandoned the pretense of censoring inappropriate content - we see photos of nude women, especially celebrities, generated or altered through AI. Sometimes, actresses and singers are made curvier and more beautiful, their skin smoothed, their forms exaggerated, their clothes more revealing. Other times, by feeding a generative algorithm with photos of a singer, outright pornographic images are generated, which are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish from real ones. This, as one can imagine, has very dangerous implications. If revenge porn was already a very serious problem, what would happen if it were based not on real images but on generated ones, and then circulated without the knowledge of its protagonist? The case of Taylor Swift (and not only hers) is a wake-up call, and legislation regarding it should be discussed and implemented as soon as possible.

DignifAI: artificial intelligence that re-clothes

On the other end of the spectrum, there's DignifAI, a self-proclaimed brand-new "movement" that aims to make photos of women and men (but mostly women) more "dignified" (whatever that means) through artificial intelligence. What does this dignification of women consist of? In dressing them in modest and traditional clothes, primarily. But it doesn't stop there. Makeup and tattoos are removed, hairstyles changed, glasses containing alcohol replaced with vases (?), and family photos added. Speaking of family: sometimes, to cover all bases and to leave no doubt about the ideological origin of these operations, children are also added, preferably in plural form. Furthermore, misogyny meets a certain racism: there's also a tendency to lighten skin tones or remove aesthetic features typical of Black culture, like grills and braids. This kind of intervention on others' photos, if not blatantly harmful like AI porn, is certainly no better: it acts without the consent of the individuals involved and alters their image to adhere to certain esthetic and behavioral models, promoting a regressive view of women who stay at home, cover up, and take care of children.

Can we decide for ourselves whether to undress or dress up? Apparently not

In a perfect world, made of rainbow cakes and glittery ponies running on cotton candy fields, both things are either forbidden or don't even exist. In this imperfect world, that is not perfect, we can only try to protect ourselves and defend ourselves against a category of men for whom we are never good enough, neither when we are too dressed nor when we are too naked, and perhaps try to assert our freedom and autonomy as much as we can and in every field we can, on our terms. With effort but hopefully also with benefit.