AI, am I attractive?
By
Tim Marcin
Associate Editor, Culture
Tim Marcin is an Associate Editor on the culture team at Mashable, where he mostly digs into the weird parts of the internet. You’ll also see some coverage of memes, tech, sports, trends, and the occasional hot take. You can find him on Bluesky (sometimes), Instagram (infrequently), or eating Buffalo wings (as often as possible).
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Credit: Photo Illustration by Thomas Fuller/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Existing and being perceived in the human form is difficult enough. We have to consider our bodies, hair, skin, and what others will think of them. There is the pressure of our online persona, what we look like IRL, and how to reconcile those images. Now, for reasons I can hardly fathom, folks are using ChatGPT to judge if they’re hot and how to make themselves better-looking.
The Washington Post reported an in-depth article on how people are using ChatGPT for beauty purposes. It detailed several examples of people asking the chatbot for a harsh assessment of their looks.
Wrote the Post:
Mashable Trend Report: Coming Soon!
But in a novel use case, people are uploading their own photos, asking it for unsparing assessments of their looks and sharing the results on social media. Many also ask the bot to formulate a plan for them to “glow up,” or improve their appearance. Users say the bot, in turn, has recommended specific products from hair dye to Botox.
Search around TikTok, and you’ll find examples of users asking ChatGPT to rate their hotness or advise them on so-called glow-ups. It’s worth noting that AI models, in general, are just scraping the internet for information. We’ve seen, of course, that the internet and social media can prove damaging to our self-image.
AI “just echoes what it’s seen online, and much of that has been designed to make people feel bad about themselves and buy more products,” Forrester commerce analyst Emily Pfeiffer told the Post.
People love using ChatGPT for trends these days. There are things like replicating selfies 100 times over or using ChatGPT as a reverse location search tool. And now, apparently, we’re using it to rank our hotness. All this technology, and we’re basically reverting back to the old-school “HOT or NOT” version of social media.
Associate Editor, Culture
Tim Marcin is an Associate Editor on the culture team at Mashable, where he mostly digs into the weird parts of the internet. You’ll also see some coverage of memes, tech, sports, trends, and the occasional hot take. You can find him on Bluesky (sometimes), Instagram (infrequently), or eating Buffalo wings (as often as possible).
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