I have chosen to use International Women’s Month as an opportunity to point out the damage AI is doing to mental health in women and girls!
A study found there has been a 550% rise in the creation of doctored images between 2019 and 2024, “fuelled by the emergence of AI”.
Increasingly, AI-generated images depicting the bodies and faces of ‘idealised’ women are being used instead of images of real women: in the media, on social media, in advertising and by businesses.
I decided to try it and see how it turned out.
Below is the original photo taken with no filters and not retouched at all.
Below it is what AI did to the photo when I uploaded it and asked for it to be enhanced!!!
Washington Post technology columnist Geoffrey A. Fowler writes “AI is acting ‘pro-anorexia’, and tech companies aren’t stopping it”.
“This is disgusting and should anger any parent, doctor or friend of someone with an eating disorder,” Fowler writes. “There’s a reason it happened: AI has learned some deeply unhealthy ideas about body image and eating by scouring the internet. And some of the best-funded tech companies in the world aren’t stopping it from happening.”
This phenomenon perpetuates itself online.
Algorithms promote images of what are considered to be ‘beautiful’ people. And as more and more AI-generated images of such people become more prevalent, the more AI algorithms will lead people to them.
AI will make producing unrealistic idealised body images more efficient and reduce costs by lowering the number of humans involved. It will lead to an increase in volume of these images due to the lower costs.
It also means less human oversight. So that’s fewer people who might say ‘WAIT we’ve gone too far, fix it’.”
Real beauty is just that REAL BEAUTY … and its all around us.
Talk to your children about how AI-generated images aren’t real and can be damaging.
I love this TEDx talk and wanted to share it with you – https://youtu.be/jN-n3s_5cBg
Please remember, when it comes to depicting women’s bodies, AI is a lie. Don’t believe it.