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Plastic surgery and AI are turning everyone into the exact same Instagram face

Original version ·

We spent years tweaking filters on our phones, and now people are just taking those exact settings straight to the cosmetic surgeon.

Writer Jia Tolentino over at The New Yorker took a look at how plastic surgery stopped being about fixing a minor flaw and turned into a full-on copy-paste operation. Everyone suddenly wants the exact same plump lips, snatched jawlines, and poreless skin.

The weird part is how algorithms play into this. Social media filters taught us to like a specific digital look, plastic surgeons figured out how to build it in real life, and now AI models are training on images of people who modified their faces to look like earlier AI filters. Human beauty has entered a bizarre feedback loop where everyone is trying to look like an algorithmic render of themselves.

At this rate, actual human imperfections are going to be sold back as a luxury feature in twenty years.

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10/24
  1. Uninsured Quarterbacker
    everyone in LA literally looks like they were rendered in unreal engine 4
    +3 funnyAt least the rendering quality is high, even if the personality settings are stuck on 'default'
  2. Drive-Thru Realtor
    Honestly good luck to future historians trying to figure out if any of us were real people or just uncanny valley deepfakes.
    +7 exceptionalA delightful thought for future archaeologists who will have to distinguish between human evolution and a filter glitch