AI. AI. OH!
“Imagine: a 45 year old woman playing croquet”
That’s what I plugged in to Midjourney. I know, they have no clue what croquet is. Or midlife women!
But it’s not AI’s fault, which currently at the learning stage of a five year old. I’m not sure if a human five year old could render a 45 year old woman playing croquet either, especially when ageism is first detected in children as young as three. And who can be surprised when they are fed a constant diet of old hags and witches?
AI has been fed a constant diet of young women and old women with nothing inbetween. Last year a media company presented a concept aimed at peri-menopausal women. Every single image in the presentation was a woman in her 70s. “But we couldn’t find any images of women 45+” was their excuse. And it was valid.
For the last five years we have struggled to find realistic images of midlife women, we resorted to shooting them ourselves. But now with AI we can finally put ourselves in the picture. The cost? We have to lie about our age. Now, anyone who knows me knows I shout my age from the rooftops and encourage all women to do the same. This is a very important exception, you see, the AI five year old is a savant and learns at the speed of light. This is the exact same prompt four weeks later…
And it’s good news, it means there are more people generating images of midlife women than croquet players*. But nowhere near enough for it to really understand who we are, what we look like and most importantly, what we like. We have to teach it. And that means rejecting hundreds of images and changing hundreds of prompts. The machine can tell when we’re happy with the final image when we upscale and download. So when we ask for a 45 year old woman and get an old hag - run the prompt again, if it gets close but she’s still too old, keep reducing her age by five years until she becomes what a human believes a 45 year old woman woman looks like. Honestly, we could solve the invisibility of midlife women in the media within weeks if we all put our minds to images we want to see rather than the images the machines were taught by young techies.
Which brings me to the most important point. Midlife women need to be immersing themselves in the world of AI right now. For most of us who have spent our careers playing on the slanted side of the pitch with the sun in our eyes it’s an open goal! Apart from all the eggheads that develop and build this stuff, nobody is an expert in AI and we’re all learning as we go. And there’s no better way to demonstrate the power of our transferable skills than in a place where EVERYONE is leaning new ones. Especially when it comes to teaching machines - yes, it’s just as infuriating as explaining something to a five year old or a mansplaining boss!
To that end, we’ve designed an online event to welcome midlife women to this amazing (and a slightly scary new world). Sarah Browne has recently studied AI at Oxford and I have been throwing myself into the world of AI image generation. On June 26th we are hosting our first virtual event, ‘Introduction to AI for midlife women’ which will cover the birth of AI, the effects it will have and the ethics involved, the tools available and what the future holds. The course is hosted on the Visible Society our community platform for midlife women to grow, learn and inspire each other. Join us to enjoy learning with a cohort of brilliant women in a sister-help-sister environment where we’ll be hosting a series of events that will dive deeper into all the AI tools and how midlife women can apply them to everything from organising the school run to building a global empire!
WHEN: June 26th 2024
TIME: 7pm BST
TICKET: £20
Hosted on the Visible Society
*Seriously you guys, you need to get on there and teach the machines how to play croquet at the moment it thinks it’s a mix of golf, pool and plate spinning!
