AI models: another unrealistic beauty standard to compete with

In the increasingly dystopian reality which is in 2025, it was really only a matter of time until the models of AI come for what remains of our dignity. In the last Black mirror-The scenarios to come to life, Guess introduced its most recent, hottest and proportionate – model – and it is not really real.

As the first model of AI to decorate the pages of VogueVivienne – The blonde status with dazzling teeth and breasts defying gravity – is one of the 10 creations of the Marketing Agency Seraphinne Vallora. And – as it is fictitious – Vivienne indicates a very real and potentially devastating future for the initiates of fashion, consumers and anyone with pores, hair, cellulite … or an impulse.

At this stage, it feels commonplace to complain about the rise of unrealistic beauty standards because these standards – most often established by companies determined to monetize our insecurities – have have Never been realistic. This is the point. Having grown up in the late 90s and early 2000s, older millennials like me were first invited to strive to make a fragile Waifishness at Kate Moss during her Calvin Klein. The peak, then the athletics of the girl-door (with the face of a model), then the “curvature” which has never been supposed to move too much from the slimming. We felt terrible for not having looked enough for Jessica Simpson around 2005, then being afraid to look like Jessica Simpson around 2009. We were sold one billion different training programs, teas with a diet (read: laxative), and potentially harmful either.

At the end of the 2010s, all was to continue “Instagram Face”, which the writer Jia Tolentino called “a single Cyborgian face”, without portico, dodue and eternally young created by filters with equal parts, fillings and botox. “It is a face which, for certain subsets of young women online, has become almost identical to basic precision.

I suppose that the bar is really in hell because I now find myself giving credit to the authors of these standards in the early 2000s – after all, at least their archetypes were human. Now, in addition to the absurdity around the supremacy of “gene / jeans”, we are not only flooded with constantly evolving ideals as described by the rare individuals who illustrate them, but also the fictitious avatars created only to embody these very narrow definitions of “perfection”.

In other words, even the most “ideal” of bodies and faces, depending on the powers in place, are too human to be ideal. Now after years and years (and I mentioned years) to be pushed and pushed to run after the standards of beauty we were told was achievable if we hardly worked And I wanted it pretty bad And killed us in the gymnasium and hungry and injected our faces, these standards are no longer relevant. After all, why stop at the limits of human perfection when you can create a level of artificial perfection that SO Perfect, humans will continue it with money, time and emotional currency forever?

It did not happen overnight, of course. For decades, the aesthetic objective positions have come closer to the device, thanks to the proliferation of subtle but transformative cosmetic procedures and filters on imperceptible social networks but which modify the appearance. People are less like people for years – it was inevitable that advertisers ended up deciding to simply skip the middle man and pass to the right towards speech and malleable creations which correspond to their needs to a T and do not need food, pay check or safe ethical working conditions.

Perhaps the use of AI models was inevitable, but that does not change the fact that these unreal creations will further distort our already dysmorphic views on beauty and body image. And it goes further than that, according to the fashion psychologist and the host of My Mind Podcast style, Jennifer Heinen. “These avatars are created using biased training data which amplifies a narrow, white and Eurocentric beauty standard,” she says. “This does not just damage the body image; He fractures identity.

Heinen says that this kind of erasure affects people’s self -esteem and strengthens a system that keeps real people who feel less than. And this type of mental manipulation is not reserved for consumers – it also degrades and moves people in the industry. And before rolling your eyes on the prospect of feeling sorry for the well -paid glamazons, consider the fact that the introduction of AI models like Vivienne and its imaginary counterparts also grow changmakers that actively work to dismantle historically strict and toxic beauty standards.

The model, the influencer and the self -proclaimed confidence, Ella Halikas, have put pressure for more inclusiveness and visibility in the fashion industry and vehemently opposed the categorization of models according to the body type. Not only are the models of AI put their work in danger, but they threaten to defeat any progress that she and others have made to help democratize fashion and beauty.

“Unfortunately, the use of AI models looks like a dream for brands; They don’t have to pay, feed or contract these models, ”explains Halikas. “In fact, brands can use, manipulate, alter and ingest the exact image they want to be included in their campaigns. I hope to see the body of this, due to the lack of clarity of the way a product really adapts to a human body when it sees it on AI. Unless there is strict regulation, more transparency and a new industry.