Remember the Miss AI contest?
In 2024 over 2,000 AI generated models and influencers were entered into the competition, lined up to be judged on factors such as “beauty” and “poise”. The inevitable backlash included accusations of “toxic” beauty norms and the notion that women were now expected to be judged against digitally perfect bodies.
In summer 2025 the creators of the Miss AI competition, the World AI Creator Awards (WAICA), announced that it would return this year in the form of the AI Woman of the Year event, and made a callout for entries.
Since then: silence. The AI Woman of the Year event doesn’t seem to have taken place, despite its website still being live. Organizers did not respond to multiple attempts by a Czech newspaper to get in touch for an update (SEXTECHGUIDE has also since attempted to make contact, without success as yet). The newspaper described the turn of events as a “farce”.
The 2024 Miss AI competition was won by Kenza Layli (pictured above): an AI-generated influencer described as Moroccan (can AI characters have nationalities?). Layli currently has around 172,000 Instagram followers, but has not posted on the platform since July 2024. Her TikTok page is no longer functioning.
Layli, created by a company called Phoenix AI, may not have gone on to great things following her 2024 victory, but it seemed like the real benefactor of the competition was supposed to be the creator platform Fanvue. The awards were created in conjunction with the platform, which allows adult content and for creators to send fake AI-generated messages to fans.
Earlier this year WAICA announced that it was “committed to evolving Miss AI for 2025” under the new title AI Woman of the Year. WAICA added: “We want to heighten brand appeal and celebrate the positive impact of AI influencers around the world.”
That plan seems to have been abandoned in favour of a pivot towards AI music. WAICA did go ahead this year with the Future Sound Awards: an AI music competition that reportedly handed out a total of $10,000 to winners who submitted tracks.
The real winner of the competition, though, appears to be the AI music platform TwoShot Studio. The only way to enter the competition was to create music using the platform. The winning entry was a syruppy r’n’b love song called ‘Sweetest Illusion’, credited to the artist Sword For Hire.
It arrives at a time when music streaming platforms are allegedly being swamped with AI ‘slop’ music, as well as allegedly AI-generated artists getting huge success.
Surprising? Not really…
Should we be surprised that the AI Woman Of The Year competition was seemingly abandoned? Criticism of the 2024 Miss AI event included the assertion from a Guardian columnist that that AI models “take every toxic gendered beauty norm and bundle them up into completely unrealistic package”.
Writer and podcaster Sangeeta Pillai Lander, meanwhile, wrote: “It’s bad enough that women are made to feel bad about their bodies every single day. Now women have the pleasure of comparing ourselves to fake AI bodies, which are ‘perfect’ because they’ve been created from the fertile imaginations of men who’ve clearly never grown beyond their teenage years.”
Still, all press is good press, and the attention WAICA and Fanvue received in 2024 from Miss AI hasn’t been matched by interest in the 2025 music awards.
We’ve asked WAICA if the AI Woman of the Year awards are dead in the water, and will update this article if we receive a response.
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