As if contoured, photoshopped, filtered, and curated influencer accounts weren’t setting the bar impossibly high already, generative AI has created a situation where the internet is becoming flooded with images of AI-generated beauty “perfection”. Dove South Africa, in partnership with VML, has created a tool to combat this epidemic of fakeness.
Dove's Real Beauty Generation
Dove challenges AI beauty standards. Using a custom microsite, users refine AI-generated images to be more inclusive.
Client
- Unilever
Office
- Johannesburg
Challenge
Generative AI tools carry with them a significant problem: their outputs reflect the biases inherent in the data on which they’re trained. Ask an AI to generate a ‘beautiful woman,’ and the result is often a filtered, Western-centric ideal. For women across the Global South – especially in Africa – that means becoming invisible in the digital age.
Even when people want to generate inclusive images of beauty, your picture is only as good as your prompt. And many users struggle to convert the image they have in their minds into words specific enough to prompt an AI effectively.
Inspiration
Dove has spent 20 years championing Real Beauty in their advertising and messaging. With the rise of AI, Dove and VML saw an opportunity to use the technology for good – redefining beauty standards internationally to be more inclusive and reflect global diversity.
Idea
It began with the Real Beauty Generation microsite. Dove and VML South Africa developed a platform that used Adobe Firefly's beta API. On the platform, users could generate images of women using prompts that included features like acne scarring, laugh lines and deep-set wrinkles – then rate them.
Meanwhile, VML and Dove took the message to the streets with a full campaign across radio, social media, influencers and more, urging users to "teach AI to see you".
In the latest phase, the team has taken it a step further, developing a world-first Chrome extension that allows users to generate inclusive, perfectly imperfect images of women using any image generation platform of their choice.
Once installed, the extension will automatically appear on screen when a user opens an AI image generator website in their Chrome browser. Drop-down menus help them describe the image they're trying to create... as well as encouraging them to think beyond traditional ideals of what beauty looks like. On the backend, an algorithm translates the user's descriptive language into technically robust prompts that guide AI systems to produce more representative results. All they need to do is copy and paste the prompt into the image generator.
Unfortunately, with the rise of generative AI, harmful stereotypes are becoming more prevalent than ever. This tool empowers users to rewrite the narrative around what real beauty looks like.”
Anele Nzimande-Maphanga
PR and Influencer Lead at Unilever South Africa
Growth
Dove's Real Beauty Generation initiative is an ongoing effort to champion a more inclusive and authentic representation of beauty in the age of AI. The Chrome extension is free and open. Its user-friendly interface makes it accessible even to users who are not particularly tech savvy.
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