Rather than hiring actual diverse workforces – or actors for advertising – or recruiting diverse customers for data sites – businesses are using “fake people” images created by computer software.

Photoshopping is so last year – the new stuff uses AI generated images:

Companies infamously have embarrassed themselves through haphazard diversity-boosting attempts, Photoshopping a black man into an all-white crowd, as the University of Wisconsin, Madison, did on an undergraduate booklet, or superimposing women into group photos of men.

In any other context, we’d call this fraud:

The company, Braun said, signed three clients in its first week: an American university, a dating app and a human-resources planning firm. Braun declined to name the clients.

Source: Dating apps need women. Advertisers need diversity. AI companies offer a solution: fake people | The Seattle Times