Remember when airbrushing and filters were our biggest worries when it came to setting unrealistic beauty standards? Since Chatgpt debuted in late 2022, it’s hard to believe how pervasive artificial intelligence (AI) has become in our everyday lives. Not a day goes by that it doesn’t come up in conversation, that we don’t experience an AI prompt asking us to let it do the heavy lifting with a text or document, or it provides a response (oftentimes wrong) to a Google search. It should come as no surprise that people tend to be divided into two camps when it comes to using it—those who love it and those who curse its very existence.
While I can certainly appreciate its ability to diagnose complex health conditions, create new pharmaceutical drugs in half the time, or craft a strongly worded email to my congressperson in mere seconds, it’s impossible to ignore the loss of jobs, its environmental impact, and the emerging studies revealing links to cognitive decline and a loss of critical thinking skills. AI will continue to surprise and disappoint us for many years to come as we grapple with its many challenges. However, just this week I couldn’t help but experience AI’s death by a thousand cuts when I came across a post on Instagram (posted by @cassandra.klepac) about New Beauty, a magazine devoted to all things beauty, relying on an AI image to illustrate a story on fillers. Although I appreciated the transparency—the image included a photo credit with the AI prompt used to create it—I experienced that sinking feeling that we’re simply digging ourselves deeper into a hole of which we’ll never climb out.
It’s bad enough that our beauty standards are defined by those with superior genetics, on GLP-1 drugs, or with an unlimited income that can fund what Katie Gatti Tassin, author of Rich Girl Nation: Taking Charge of Our Financial Futures, calls “the hot-girl hamster wheel.” For those not in the know, that refers to the recurring expenses required for a woman to keep up appearances. Think: Hair, nails, Botox, waxing, and more. Now, the standard is being elevated by images of those who aren’t even human. It was hard enough keeping up with the Kardashians. And don’t get me started on Skims new collagen-infused face shapewear. The Review of Beauty, a Substack by beauty reporter Jessica DeFino, who once worked for the Kardashians and Jenners, is a must-read for anyone who wants to take a deep dive into how beauty culture affects us all with its unrealistic expectations.
Vogue magazine also recently came under fire for running a Guess ad in its August issue that depicted AI-generated models. Aside from the job displacement concerns of replacing real models, it’s just another example of how AI is perpetuating unrealistic (and certainly unattainable) beauty standards. According to The Bulimia Project, 40 percent of AI-generated images overall depicted unrealistic body types, and when it comes to women, AI-generated images tend to express a bias toward blonde hair, brown eyes, and olive skin.
In Dove’s 2024 The Real State of Beauty: A Global Report, the company conducted a study of more than 33,000 people across 20 countries to understand how beauty impacts women and girls today. What it found is that AI is one of the biggest threats to the representation of real beauty. In fact, almost one in two reported feeling pressure to alter their appearance because of what they saw online, even when they knew it was fake or AI-generated. The brand has committed to never using AI-generated images to represent real women in its ads. The same can’t be said for many other brands and platforms who now find it easier and cheaper to rely on AI rather than employ models, photographers, art directors, and all the other people who have long been responsible for creating the images and content we consume. What this means for the future of beauty is a lack of diversity, something many have been working to broaden in recent years, and even more toxic beauty standards.
