How it started...

During the starting days of Google, I developed the habit of asking Google one question a day. Things I wondered about, like: why do ducks stay afloat? Or how hard should you throw a rock to make it orbit into space? When the years and life went by, I lost this habit. Internet and Google became a regular part of my life and as SEO and SEA progressed, I started getting irritated because you never really found what you are looking for anymore. There were a huge number of blogs who want to sell you something. (I say this without judgement. I worked for a long time as a copywriter, you might say i was at one point part of the problem.)

Until ChatGPT came around.

I got a new way of getting fast answers to all of my questions. I started using it daily at first, but after a few weeks it got to be part of my day to day life. From content brainstorms over technical term to formula's for Excel: it assists me with a lot of tasks. It even translates my messages to perfect French to communicate with my French babysit. But I also have discussions with ChatGPT. When it's wrong, I correct the system. Sometimes I get to a point where I passive-aggressively end the conversation with "Whatever, nevermind, you don't understand what I want."

Online, I noticed a lot of people (and within my algoritm mostly white men) popping up and calling themselves coaches or experts of AI and ChatGPT. I saw books appearing months after the launch, of people claiming to have years of experience with ChatGPT. I always got a bit annoyed, especially when I discovered I knew all the things they talked about.

What I also noticed, was what I also saw when I entered the NFT and web3 space. I don't feel represented. I don't see images that I identify with. And I am never at ease, because I have the feeling I am being watched and judged by men. I don't see the mess that is real life. And when I see female bodies, I see boobs and booties, but never something that is even close to how I look. And that was why I also lost my interest in this evolution in technology.

Enter Anna

That's were I thought I should change something. If you don't like what you see, change the narrative. But how?

That's when I came across a post about AI influencers. And with doing research, I discovered behind all these curated posts and AI generated beautiful and perfect women are... men generating the content. And that felt - to say the least - wrong. So I decided to start my own account, as an experiment. And that's how Anna was born.

But I noticed something...

At first I thought I did something wrong. When I was generating pictures and images of the woman I was trying to create, I never got what I wanted. I am a midsized woman that turns 40 this year. My body is soft and flawed and the first grey hairs are popping up. Depending on what day in the month, I have pimpels and a belly. And I have psoriasis, an auto-immune disease that affects your skin. And all these things were something AI could seemed unable to generate. I started to discuss, how big Anna should be. How she would have curves and big boobs (that last prompt led to some other kind of content, than Instagram would approve of), how she would need to look older than 20 but younger then 90, how her skin should be affected a bit by psoriasis, but not too much. The more I asked, the less I got bodies that look like mine. Every once and a while, I got close, but when I asked to add something else, the system got lost again and bounced back to the perfect, flawless, size 0 woman.

It got me thinking. I am aware that my experience with ChatGPT had taught me to discuss things with the systems. But what if - in the future - the people using AI to created the images we see day to day, will not discuss but just use these images? What effects will this have on our views on a womans body, when real bodies are not seen anymore? That's what fueled my opinion that education is needed. Education of the people who will decide what images are shaping our society. We should teach people to think critical about generative AI and to keep on trying with generating.

And what if every underrepresented person stops using generative AI because they don't get what they want or need? In that case, the gap between the represented bodies and the underrepresented bodies will only get bigger, until it reaches disruptive proportions.

So what if we try to change this narrative? What if we educate as many people as possible about generative AI and how it's important to keep on asking for the skintone, bodyshape, haircolor, gender, abilities,... you want. Until you do see yourself represented. I know I am asking a lot, because it is uncomfortable and hard to keep asking for more. And to use words you don't like to describe yourself with or with words that are offensive to you. But it is important, because we are teaching these generative systems that there is more then these perfect humans they create.

Launch

And so it started, my experiment with two goals:

• documenting how I try to get realistic images that look like real, flawed humans on one side.
• And educating people on what biases are and how to spot them on the other side.

I started an Instagram page for Anna, and talked about this issue on LinkedIn. This went viral and this was how Anna got a head start (BIG thanks to everybody who reposted, answered or called me out upon things I still have a lot to learn about myself). And this head start led to this newsletter, a course on bias in AI (for beginners) which will be launched somewhere in the near future and a lot of feeling gratefull about all the new connections and people who took the time to read and respond to my post. I am happy this experiment resonates with this many people and I hope we can ignite the change, so the future can me less biased then our history is.

Are you curious about Anna? You can follow her on het Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/anna_ingram_80/

Do you want to support the experiment by buying me a coffee, to help with the development of this experiment? You can do this here: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/biasinai