HOW DOVE USED AI TO CREATE THE ‘PERFECT MOM’

To launch its new baby-care line, and to prove a point, Dove worked with Happy Finish and PR agency MHP Communications to crystallise the media’s unrealistic portrayal of mums into one creepy image.

Meet “Aimee”, the result of AI technology scanning more than 1,800 images of motherhood from newspapers, magazines and social media.

Using a technique called “generative adversarial networks”, the system uses two AI algorithms to create a photo-realistic image. One would produce an image and the other would determine if it was realistic enough. The two pinging off each other would rapidly improve the result until a commercially viable image was produced.

“The only problem is no image larger than 200 pixels had ever been created. And this one needed to be at least a megapixel in size and extremely photorealistic,” Marco Marchesi, head of tech at Happy Finish, explains.

It took five weeks of perfecting the AI and five days of letting the system work to produce Aimee.

With glossy hair, a manicure and perfectly lined eyes, Dove and its agencies were fully aware that Aimee would spark controversy. And she did. Peering down from billboards with the question “Is there a perfect mum?” alongside the hashtag #realmums, Aimee drove London’s mums into an outraged frenzy on Twitter.

“That isn’t what a #realmum looks like,”

@mummy_setra wrote. “What kind of example are you setting with images like this? You don’t have to look like a supermodel to be a good parent,”

@sushirollphan added.

But that was the point, Dove said in a statement. The idea was to get mums talking about how seeing such an image made them feel and what they thought about the idea.

A day after posing the question, Dove revealed all, explaining that typical media images don’t reflect the reality of motherhood.

As the statement said:

“You don’t have to strive to live the way mums are often portrayed in the media to be doing a great job.”