Interesting to hear the Mahindra will be racing in Roborace this season.
Images Courtesy Mahindra Racing
Meet Ava Rose, Mahindra Racing’s newest ambassador. Rather than hire a woman to join them in the paddock, the Formula E team instead tabbed an AI bot.
As you can imagine, the response to this announcement was frosty, at best.
“motorsport companies/teamswill do anything but hire actual women,” said Ash Vandelay, a Formula 1 Twitch streamer, on Instagram.
“you literally could have just hired an actual woman ?” said Taylor Kusse-Smith on Facebook.
“What a literal slap in the face to the women who actually enjoy the sport, and would have gone above and beyond in this role,” said Samantha Tate Zimmerman, a motorsports artist, on Instagram.
We reached out to the press contact listed on Mahindra Racing’s Instagram account, but the email bounced back. We also sent messages to Mahindra Racing through social media and await to hear back from them.
We messaged Ava Rose (yes, the AI bot) for comment, too. Ava Rose has not responded, either.
Adding a bit more fuel to the fire is Ava Rose’s stated mission on her social media pages: “Fueling inclusion through Ai innovation.”
Does Ava Rose fulfill her mission? Is she helping inclusion in motorsport?
Interesting to hear the Mahindra will be racing in Roborace this season.
Yikes.
Translation: We needed some cheap buzzwords in our marketing materials but we don't actually care about being inclusive. Just give us your money.
So instead of hiring a real woman...they made one? Sounds like someone watched Weird Science, and thought they had a great idea.
It wouldn't be the first time a social media entity intentionally posted something blatantly terrible in order to generate traffic. The algorithms reward traffic, and nothing generates more traffic than angry people.
It's a bold strategy, Cotton...
They can make grid girls for all the guys complaining.
Maybe the programmer was a woman.
I find this path rather lame and typical of our time.
Virtual Idols date back to 90's Japan, but I've never actually understood the phonenomena. I don't really understand modern influencer fandoms or simp culture either. I guess if this stuff appeals to, you are the target demographic; if it doesn't appeal to you, just ignore it.
The benefit to using a virtual "influencer" is that they won't do anything embarrassing or stupid that will reflect badly on their sponsors. They're also less expensive. It's actually causing problems for real-life social media personalities as brands like that.
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2023/12/ai-created-virtual-influencers-are-stealing-business-from-humans/
Diversity has nothing to do with it, although it does allow the spokesbot to be ambiguous. There are real people who are like that as well.
Keith Tanner said:The benefit to using a virtual "influencer" is that they won't do anything embarrassing or stupid that will reflect badly on their sponsors.
I'm just waiting until the Microsoft Twitter bot is reincarnated.
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