Now in its 16th season, RuPaul’s Drag Race has birthed more than a few iconic lip-sync battles, but precious few have featured Muppets. None, even. AI Drag Race changed that. In the Instagram account’s recent season finale, Miss Piggy, wearing an AI-generated drag look, faced off against lover-turned-rival Kermisha Ihman, who had a thick, 40-inch-long ponytail atop her green felt head.
Tackling Lady Gaga’s “Telephone,” the two whirled and jumped, kicking and bucking in front of head judge Betty Boop. Kermisha worked her faux-nailed webbed feet, sickening in her bejeweled purple corset, but ultimately she fell to Piggy, whose fringe flew as she went for a well-timed jump split at the song’s climax. As the commenters watching the video noted, “Kermisha fought hard and devoured,” but “Miss Piggy ate.”
AI Drag Race is just one of a burgeoning number of AI-generated accounts popping up on Instagram and TikTok, with creators not only pitting their favorite fictional characters against each other in seasons meant to mimic the original show, but also creating and generating their own queens.
There’s AI Horror Drag Race, which features characters like Pennywise and Billy the Puppet facing off against Ghostface from Scream. There’s also Big Girl’s Drag Race, which is exclusively for curvy characters. (Past winners include Ursula from The Little Mermaid and Fat Albert.) All the participants in Fantasy Drag Race’s seasons look vaguely like dolls, while Slay Drag Race AI, which recently eliminated Scooby-Doo sidekick Shaggy and Marceline from Adventure Time, is hosted by a surprisingly accurate-looking Dora the Explorer.
Some accounts put their participants through signature Drag Race challenges, like Snatch Game and commercial shoots; others create not just the contestants’ runway looks but also their street-clothed everyday looks for workroom shots or interview stills.
They’re also operating in something of a copyright gray area. Drag Race, Miss Piggy, and Pennywise all have stakeholders. Creators behind the various accounts claim that what they’re doing is a parody, or falls under the fair use doctrine of the Copyright Act, which stipulates that “transformative” works are protected. Beyond that, though, are questions about whether AI should even be able to generate an image of, for example, Homer Simpson in a kitsched-up showgirl costume. One day, a court may decide that AI models can’t train on copyrighted characters or produce outputs depicting them, says James Grimmelmann, a professor of digital and information law at Cornell University.
“I think that would be a loss to culture, but it’s also something that could be consistent with existing copyright law,” Grimmelmann adds. “We’re in a period of legal uncertainty right now.”
Michael, a fashion illustrator who lives in Europe and runs The Official AI Drag Race account, says he first came to spoof Drag Race a few years back after finding Paper Drag, an online competition in which participants are tasked with drawing a look based on a theme each week. A fan of extravagant costumes, he’d already been drawing drag artwork in his spare time, so it seemed like a natural fit. A few years later, while walking his dog with his partner, the two started coming up with fake drag names.
Dell Cameron
Matt Burgess
Julian Chokkattu
Caroline Haskins
“Then,” Michael says, “we found this simulator online where you can create custom queens and put in stats for them, like acting, comedy, dance, design, improv, runway, and lip sync, and give them a score from one to 15. We thought it would be funny to come up with seven queens each and run a fake season just to see whose queen won.” They did that about 10 times over the course of a year, taking personal pride over who won each season. (Michael and the other creators interviewed for this story declined to give their full names, and some chose aliases, citing fears of harassment or copyright takedowns.)
Around 2022, Michael says he started to see more AI images online and began to dabble with Craiyon, creating images of queens. He and his partner decided to take one of the seasons they’d already simulated and create AI images to accompany it, using the existing simulation to decide who’d be knocked out of the competition. He put it online and told some of his friends. Now his account is one of the most popular AI drag Instas, with 13,000 followers and counting.
To craft his looks, Michael first comes up with a character like Tina Donna, a competitor in his current season who hails from Nashville. “She’s the local girl who managed to get on TV,” he explains. “She’s from a small Southern town originally and she doesn’t have as much money as everyone else, but she has a winning personality.”
Pulling from past real-life Drag Race episodes, he determines a runway theme and then plugs a description into Copilot of what he thinks each particular queen would wear, writing something like “full-body image of a plus size [Latinx] drag queen with flowing blonde hair and an ornate star-covered headpiece posing elegantly on RuPaul’s Drag Race main stage,” and then adding details about her dress, any accessories he wants, and what kinds of shoes he sees her wearing. He tweaks each image that’s produced, adding in new prompts to get it to where he wants to be and ideally making the queen’s face look at least a little consistent with how it has looked in weeks past.
“Sometimes I get the render I want the first time, but sometimes it takes me 50 times of running the same input over and over again until it gives me the magic output,” Michael says. He uses his fashion expertise to produce costumes that he thinks are relatively realistic, using descriptors that help hone the looks’ silhouettes and textiles, as well as the techniques theoretically used to create them. “We like it when someone is scrolling Instagram and thinks, ‘Wait, what season of Drag Race is that?’” he explains.
There are still limitations to what AI can do. Many creators note that inputting “drag queen” into Copilot almost always yields a showgirl-like skinny white figure wearing a high-low dress, legs exposed in the front, with a big train. Getting a plus-size queen or a queen of color can require some finessing, as can getting any sort of specific makeup look. (This simplistic and whitewashed idea of drag performers echoes how a lot of AI tools generate queer people.)
Dell Cameron
Matt Burgess
Julian Chokkattu
Caroline Haskins
Boppy, the creator of Haus of Dreg, says they’ve had trouble getting a consistent Daphne from Scooby-Doo, noting they had to ask for “Daphne Blake from Mystery Incorporated” lest they occasionally end up with the cartoon dog instead. The creator of another page, SpongePaul’s Drag Race, has had a hell of a time persuading AI to put a wig on Big Bird.
When creators make multiple images of the same performers—for a spliced-together lip sync clip, for example—the limits (and reach) of AI can be unintentionally hilarious. Calling on Copilot (which appears to be a favored AI tool from Microsoft) to portray a drag queen in a spectrum of positions might result in it allocating less attention to features like the hair and outfit, leading to the manifestation of increasingly extravagant wigs and dresses, or fluctuating appearances across different frames.
In terms of eliminations, every showrunner has a unique methodology. Michael employs the same simulator he’s used since the beginning of his engagement in the Official AI Drag Race, maintaining a certain level of unpredictability in his contest and keeping the results occasionally stunning. Haus of Dreg’s Boopy comprises a judging panel of six friends. On the other hand, Shayne from Horror Drag Race makes elimination decisions based on audience engagement with the performers’ outfits. Shayne articulates, “You want it to seem fair so people can feel like they have a role in the production of the show. I don’t want it to seem contrived, counterfeit, or predictable.”
Conversely, a portion of what makes an AI-engineered drag race successful is adherence to the established format of the show. With a 15-year tenure featuring hundreds of episodes and numerous international adaptations, RuPaul’s Drag Race has conceived a recognizable progression of plot points, characters, and story arcs. This familiarity allows AI creators to know that their initial lineups need to consist of comedy queens, body queens, fashion queens, BIPOC queens, and queens of size. They can often predict enduring competitors, based on character traits and likely performance in each challenge, or how they might stand up to critical judgment.
Más, the creator of Fantasy Drag Race, opines, “What many people appreciate about the actual show Drag Race is its intense competition aspect. Eventually, you become accustomed to expecting certain queens to never fall to the bottom or expecting other queens to always find themselves in the bottom.”
It’s that set of expectations and tropes that makes AI drag work, since fans—and potentially the AI—know not only the look of the show, but also the language it uses. “AI drag is an accumulation of all previously done concepts and ideas,” Más explains. “That’s what makes it interesting, but also grounded in a way. The image generators are trained on videos and photos and web searches that contain the full history of drag, fashion, and pop culture, making what they create an accumulation of queer culture overall.” This may be a bit hyperbolic. Considering its history, it’s almost impossible to understand the full history of drag, but Más has a point: AI has a unique ability to synthesize ideas.
Dell Cameron
Matt Burgess
Julian Chokkattu
Written by: Caroline Haskins
The interaction of the tangible and intangible might elucidate why certain followers of artificial Drag Race become so enthused about what they are observing on their feeds. Michael expresses he “lives for the exaggerated reactions of fans” who perceive his creations as real entities. He states that people frequently request him for a queen’s authentic Instagram handle.
“I also frequently receive the occasional dislike comment from someone claiming I’m depriving real drag queens of employment opportunities,” he mentions. Being an illustrator, Michael asserts he understands “that AI is threatening to replace my occupation,” but does not think his Instagram side project is taking any financial benefits from humans. “Should someone cease going to the club and tipping a genuine drag queen because they witnessed AI Drag Race, that is a person’s issue and not an issue with my Drag Race,” he proclaims.
Fantasy Drag Race’s Más reveals she has experienced conflicts with other creators in group discussions, as well, after questioning their seriousness about the entire process. “I’m a queer, non-binary Mexican living in upstate New York,” she clarifies. “Facing criticism that my drag competition isn’t to everyone’s taste or that some ensemble I designed is unattractive have no impact on me.” Nonetheless, she asserts, it’s reasonable that individuals form emotional connections with her work.
Unfortunately, that kind of attachment also comes with a sense of looming dread, since the whole idea of AI-generated Drag Race is a play on a big franchise. While some creators debate that what they’re doing is satire, posting what Grimmelmann describes as “almost completely useless” copyright disclaimers on their main Instagram page, others admit that they might be increasing their followers on uncertain footing.
Many accounts, including one that exclusively showcased Disney characters, have been removed from Instagram already, leading creators who only use animated or existing characters to feel somewhat worried. “I am truly worried about being removed,” says Haus of Dreg’s Boopy. “But if that happened, then I suppose that’s just the way it is. I mean, what else could I do?”
“I make certain that I don’t sexualize the characters, and I don’t do anything to decrease their actual tone,” asserts Horror Drag Race’s Shayne. “I am only combining two mediums—horror and Drag Race—and creating something that both group of fans will appreciate.”
It’s not just Drag Race fans who are relishing the AI experience. Mhi’ya Iman Le’Paige, a queen from the 16th season of Drag Race, just paraded a look on the runway that was initially seen in a series of AI-created pictures. One of her sisters from the 16th season, Plane Jane, is also following at least one of the AI creators.
The Official AI Drag Race’s Michael shares that numerous queens have contacted him asking to utilize their fictitious characters as inspiration. Interestingly, an anonymous queen from an international franchise requested Michael to create their entire ensemble of runway looks solely based on his Carla Montecarlo images. “I sense that it’s only a matter of time,” Michael expresses, “before I’ll be absorbing television and identifying something that I rendered a year prior.”
