20 years after Mark Zuckerbergā€™s infamous ā€˜hot-or-notā€™ website, developers have learned absolutely nothing.


Two decades after Mark Zuckerberg created FaceMash, the infamously sexist ā€œhot-or-notā€ website that served as the precursor to Facebook, a developer has had the bright idea to do the exact same thingā€”this time with all the women generated by AI.

A new website, smashorpass.ai, feels like a sick parody of Zuckerbergā€™s shameful beginnings, but is apparently meant as an earnest experiment exploring the capabilities of AI image recommendation. Just like Zuckā€™s original site, ā€œSmash or Passā€ shows images of women and invites users to rate them with a positive or negative response. The only difference is that all the ā€œwomenā€ 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 siteā€™s novice developer, Emmet Halm, the site is a ā€œgenerative AI party gameā€ that requires ā€œno further explanation.ā€

ā€œYou know what to do, boys,ā€ 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 ā€œsmashes.ā€

Understandably, AI experts find the project simultaneously horrifying and hilariously tonedeaf. ā€œItā€™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,ā€ 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 menā€”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 hasnā€™t stopped many AI developers from deploying apps that inherit those biases in new and often harmful ways. In some cases, developers espousing ā€œanti-wokeā€ 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 oppositeā€”that AI is ā€œwokeā€ because popular tools like ChatGPT wonā€™t say racial slurs.

The developerā€™s initial claims about the siteā€™s capabilities seem to be exaggerated. In a series of tweets, Halm claimed the project is a ā€œrecursively self-improvingā€ 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 doesnā€™t actually self-improveā€”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.

Itā€™s also not gone over well with everyone on social media. One blue-check user responded, ā€œBro 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.ā€

Halm could not be reached for comment.

ā€œIā€™m in the arena trying stuff,ā€ Halm tweeted. ā€œSome ideas just need to exist.ā€

Luccioni points out that no, they absolutely do not.

ā€œThere are huge amounts of nonhuman data that is available and this tool could have been used to generate images of cars, kittens, or plantsā€”and yet we see machine-generated images of women with big breasts,ā€ said Luccioni. ā€œAs a woman working in the male-dominated field of AI, this really saddens me.ā€


        • Umbrias@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          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 donā€™t think your idea of sexism or racism holds upā€¦

          • Narrrz@kbin.social
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            1 year ago

            is a generated image of a white person racist?
            we havenā€™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.

            • Umbrias@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              The details are literally women being objectified, and blackface. You have intentionally chosen to not read words toā€¦ 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.

              • Narrrz@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                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 donā€™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.

                • Kajo [he/him] šŸŒˆ@beehaw.org
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                  1 year ago

                  I donā€™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 thatā€™s an other subject). But generating pictures of persons in different skin tons on a website called apartheid.ai and making people vote ā€œwhite or blackā€, that would be racist.

                  The problem here is not generating picture of women, but how these pictures are used.

                  • Narrrz@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    iā€™m sorry, then, i misunderstood - and if, as someone else suggested, you were simply being hyperbolic in bringing up blckface as a comparative example, then iā€™m sorry i didnā€™t catch that.

                • Umbrias@beehaw.org
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                  1 year ago

                  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 youā€™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.

            • liv@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              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 donā€™t think the author of the article is arguing that, nor anyone in here.

              • Narrrz@kbin.social
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                1 year ago

                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 wouldnā€™t automatically be racist.

                this app isnā€™t sexist because it generates images of women, itā€™s sexist (or not, since thatā€™s whatā€™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, Iā€™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 itā€™s of a fictional woman? what if the intent is to appeal to people who are axially attracted to women? thereā€™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 isnā€™t sexist per se, Iā€™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 itā€™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 donā€™t think this situation is nearly as clear cut as most people seem to be taking it to be, in either direction.

                • liv@beehaw.org
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                  1 year ago

                  I see what youā€™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 Iā€™m not trying to say whipping people is equivalent to rating their looks. Obviously itā€™s not. Iā€™m just making a thought experiment to unpack this idea that imaginary interactions canā€™t be -ist.

                  • Narrrz@kbin.social
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                    1 year ago

                    oh, iā€™m not denying in the slightest that interactions with imaginary people can still be racist, sexist, whatever. even if you were rating AI generated people of colour according to their looks, or probably nearly any other criteria, that could very well be racist.

                    In regards to the original topic, I just think thereā€™s too much to unpack to give an easy verdict of sexist or not, at least for myself. But, i donā€™t know, if it were an app that rewarded you for discriminating (or abusing, definitely) someone, even an entirely fictional person, that would definitely be sexist, or racist, or whatever else.

      • Umbrias@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        But see theyā€™re made up. If the characters arenā€™t real, who could possibly suffer the effects of media intentionally objectifying women or otherwise reducing a group of people into caricatured stereotypes- ohhhhhhhhhhhhh

    • alwaysconfused@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      This type of ā€œparty gameā€ is still at itā€™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. Itā€™s encouraging behaviour that makes women feel uncomfortable or unsafe.

      This type of objectifying isnā€™t exclusive to this project. Groups of men will rate and objectify women casually and frequently. Iā€™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 ā€œtech broā€ idea was focused on hyper sexualizing and objectifying women as if they were just another thing for menā€™s entertainment.

      Simply, itā€™s gross behaviour. Just because they are generated images does not make it any less gross or acceptable. People are not objects for another personā€™s amusement and we should not encourage such behaviour.

    • RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org
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      1 year ago

      This is like dunking on DeviantArt because it has artists who make cheesecake pictures of ladies. Iā€™m not saying itā€™s something I personally enjoy, but who am I to tell others what art they should enjoy?

      • Umbrias@beehaw.org
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        1 year ago

        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 itā€™s fiction, itā€™s okay?

        • RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org
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          1 year ago

          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, Iā€™m not sure I understand that. Itā€™s up to the audience to decide whether they like something, or not, or whether they are happy with whatever ā€œeffectsā€ it has on them. The effect most are interested in is ā€œpleasureā€, I think. If one doesnā€™t like the pics, one is not in the audience for that art.

          If one wants to make the argument that folks shouldnā€™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 donā€™t see the issue.

          I do concur that it could be ā€œsexistā€ in the same sense that anybody discriminating based on sexual preference is sexist, but Iā€™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 thatā€™s technically sexist because theyā€™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.

          • Gaywallet (they/it)@beehaw.orgM
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            1 year ago

            Someone who prefers lady types as sexual partners may prefer to look at cheesecake pics of lady types, I guess, and thatā€™s technically sexist because theyā€™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.

          • Umbrias@beehaw.org
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            1 year ago

            downstream effects on a vulnerable/disempowered population, that would be a different argument.

            That is literally the argument in question about this whole post. šŸ¤¦

            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 donā€™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 ā€œdiscrimination based on sexual preferencesā€ is justā€¦ Wow.

            • RickRussell_CA@beehaw.org
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              1 year ago

              I can only respond to the complaint you made:

              authorial intent or real practical effects on an audience

              ā€¦ 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 donā€™t think the authorā€™s intent really matters in art. If one is interested in context, then itā€™s a useful context.

              In this case, the images have no ā€œauthorā€, theyā€™re a machine output, so Iā€™m not sure how you think authorial intent figures in this.

              EDIT: My mistake, Iā€™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 Iā€™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? Iā€™m not sure there is any moral imperative on the viewer to care.

    • Gaywallet (they/it)@beehaw.orgM
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      1 year ago

      Jumping into the feminism community to challenge a fairly core tenant of feminism is a bad take. Iā€™m removing this because it was a comment made clearly in bad faith. Youā€™re expected to be nice on our instance, do better in the future.