Lil Miquela – an Instagram fashion icon with over 600k followers – attended Prada’s Show at Milan Fashion Week.
She did all the things an influencer does – selfies; Instagram; witty one-liners.
Sounds pretty standard right? Well, there’s just one catch.
Lil Miquela isn’t human.
She’s AI.
People are pretty confused as to what Lil Miquela actually is.
Some speculate that she is a 3D model based off a ‘real’ woman. Others think she’s a massive marketing scheme. Some even speculate that Miquela is an art project created by a student artist with a taste for unsubtle social commentary and way too much time on their hands.
Regardless, she looks hella real.
Lil Miquela enters the world in a time where the role of AI is increasingly being brought into question. Take a look at the most recent season of Black Mirror, wherein the entire first episode features six AI beings trying to escape from a computer.
Even though Lil Miquela is fake, does it mean her feelings are fake?
Does she have a consciousness?
This also leaves us questioning the authenticity of Instagram itself. The social media giant has always been prolific for allowing us to see the inner world of celebrities. Many argue that Lil Miquela contributes to a culture of inauthenticity, and posit that all of Instagram is ‘artificial’.
Regardless, this AI is more fashionable than me.
And that is the most depressing fact of all.
You know what else is depressing?
Just how much sex our olympians had during the winter olympics.
