It was only a matter of time. First, the surreal, cosmetically enhanced faces of celebrities and influencers convinced millions of people they, too, should look like they were recovering from a severe allergic reaction. Now, the unreality of AI-generated images is convincing people they should look like AI slop.
According to a recent Business Insider report, plastic surgeons and cosmetic dermatologists are getting more and more patients who walk into consultations carrying AI-generated versions of themselves that look as rubbery and cartoony as any generative AI’s attempt at photorealistic imagery can be. Older people whose faces have aged naturally come in asking for jaws so sharp that they can open a can of beans. Eyes big and wide like a perv’s ideal submissive anime girlfriend. They ask for physical proportions that boggle the mind as they bend the laws of space and time, putting the doctors themselves in God’s crosshairs, as prospective patients ask trained medical professionals to defy His will.
Maybe We Weren’t Meant to Look Like Cartoons
Business Insider spoke with Dr. Rachel Westbay, a cosmetic dermatologist in New York, who described one patient bringing in a ChatGPT-generated pic that was just a straight-up cartoon, a parody of an actual human. “It’s like saying I want to look like Ariel from ‘The Little Mermaid,’” she said.
It all just feels like the next logical step, as AI has created a kind of beauty arms race that has taken standards that were already unattainable for all but a precious few and has rocket propelled them beyond the stratosphere, beyond the stars, and into a whole new dimension of the surreal, a timeless void of hypnotic swirls where equations, cryptic symbols, and perfectly sculpted Pixar character bug eyes fly by.
It doesn’t help that AI chatbots are notoriously sycophantic and encourage people’s worst instincts, leaving doctors having to explain that, No, I can’t make your nose so thin that you breathe like a pug. And if you did, all the wheezing and grunting might counteract any work we do here.
The post People Are Asking Plastic Surgeons to Make Them Look Less Human appeared first on VICE.
