Beauty Standards Make Me Ashamed Of My Features — & AI Makes It Worse

“What in the Black Mirror am I looking at?” snorted a friend when I showed her Reem Bot for the first time. Reem is an influencer and journalist created by artificial intelligence and powered by online lifestyle magazine SheerLuxe, and she was launched to a flurry of angered reviews.

I didn’t know how to respond to my friend because I wasn’t actually sure, and I didn’t know how I felt about it, or why. The rise of AI influencers as a whole — from Reem to Kenza Layli, who was just crowned the first “Miss AI” in a virtual beauty pageant — makes me feel uncomfortable, but not for the reasons you might think.

Along with the rest of my generation, I am no stranger to change and technological advances. Our whole lives have been shaped by it. My generation remembers chunky desktop computers but we also remember CDs, iPods, Nokias, Instagram’s birth and exactly when it became “normal” to have access to the internet in our pockets. We weren’t iPad kids but we are digital natives.

Why, then, do AI influencers make me feel so uneasy? Surely they’re just par for the course? Yet another notch in our digital belts? 

To truly understand, I need to give you some context. I am a proud woman of colour. My mum’s side of the family hails from India and my dad’s side comes from Zimbabwe. 23andMe says I’m part Persian, and I grew up flicking between the United Kingdom and the United Arab Emirates. I love that I come from such beautiful and varied cultures but loving the way I look as a result of this rich history has not been easy. I grew up hiding my features and wishing I could change them: If only my huge South Asian nose were smaller! If only I could be less hairy! Why are my under-eye circles so dark?

I have this really vivid memory of locking myself in a bathroom and sobbing because I didn’t look like a girl from school called Suzie. She was blonde and blue-eyed, with perfect skin and a cute button nose. Her golden arm hair sparkled in the sun. All the boys fancied her. The same boys laughed at my monobrow and “moustache”. They called me a witch because my eyes are such a deep brown that they almost look black.

By my late teens, I’d dyed my hair blonde and experimented with green contacts. Many of my friends did the same. Looking back, I wonder if this was a subconscious effort to look more racially ambiguous. Nothing pleased me more than someone asking if I was Italian, and nothing annoyed me more than someone asking where in India I was from. (“How dare they assume where I’m from? I’m from Leicester.”)

Growing up as a person of colour in a Eurocentric world wasn’t easy. I wanted to shed my brownness because, ultimately, I felt like my brownness was undesirable. So imagine my unease when I saw Reem for the first time: a woman with an Arabic name, gorgeous dark hair and heavy brows...except she’s also got a teeny-tiny, Westernised nose and sparkling green eyes. Not the dark eyes that are most common in the Middle East.

SheerLuxe has not confirmed Reem's ethnicity but many of the brand’s followers have assumed she’s an Arab thanks to her name. Suppose she is an Arab woman in a world where Arabs are so vilified and whiteness so glorified — has she been edited into something more palatable for the masses? Are we, as people of colour, so disgusting and ugly that we need to be altered? As a Muslim, this thought cuts me deeply, especially amid such a contentious political landscape. As I write, far-right protests are taking place up and down the country with an anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim rhetoric. Are we so offensive that we can’t be depicted accurately even in an artificial world?

Reem is not the only AI influencer to have stirred up these feelings. Kenza is a “Moroccan Muslim” AI influencer and yet she’s so fair that if it wasn’t for her attire, you’d be forgiven for thinking she was European. She reminded me, again, that beauty ideals for people of colour are nigh on impossible to meet, and we’re still being compared to fair-skinned, Westernised ideals. It’s no wonder that the global skin whitening market is expected to reach a worth of $11.8 billion by 2026. As a person who has spent a lot of their life wishing they were white, this erasure of POC features in AI is deeply concerning and it takes me back to a problematic time that I thought I’d left behind. Yes, AI might be the future but are we moving forward in technology only to move backward in terms of ethics and diversity? In my opinion, these Westernised AI influencers of colour mark a big step backward in the name of innovation — all under the guise of diversity in what feels like a performative, box-ticking exercise. 

Even in a made-up, artificial world, unattainable standards are being forced onto women of colour the most. We can never live up to something that simply doesn’t exist. People of colour have their own beautiful attributes. We have dark shadows beneath our eyes and we’re prone to hyperpigmentation. We need to fight for this beauty to be seen within pop culture, not erased with AI. 

After seeing these influencers infiltrate my feed, I find myself looking in the mirror with similar feelings to the ones I had when I was 13 years old and comparing myself to Suzie. Perhaps I could just tweak my nose a little. How much does a nose job cost, anyway?

As it happens, I’m not the only one who feels this way. Dr Jonny Betteridge, aesthetics doctor and trainer at JB Aesthetics, says this is something he’s been seeing on social media for a while. He tells me that clients often approach him with pictures of filtered celebrities or influencers in tow, hoping he can tweak their appearance to resemble something that doesn’t exist in the real world. “The rise of social media and filters has dramatically altered public perception of beauty standards. These platforms promote a very polished, often unattainable beauty ideal that emphasises flawlessness and symmetry,” he says. That’s not all; he worries that AI will intensify these trends, creating even more unrealistic looks that are hard to replicate. “As AI becomes better at simulating human features in a seemingly perfect manner, it could encourage a homogenised beauty standard,” he explains.

This can be particularly damaging for women of colour who don’t fit into what Dr Betteridge calls “a very narrow” ideal. He also notes that this diminishing of diverse beauty can make individuals feel that they aren’t valued or beautiful. This, he says, “can lead to cultural erasure” and a lack of appreciation for the rich diversity of such beauty. “I am also worried about the rise in facial dysmorphia,” he says, explaining that as the gap widens between real human features and idealised, digital representations, people are more likely to perceive minor or nonexistent “flaws” in their appearance as severe.

Keen to know how all of this is translating to real people, I reached out to a handful of women of colour for their opinions. “I think AI and AI filters do different kinds of damage to different ethnicities,” says Anya*, 27, who lives in the United Arab Emirates. “For example, in Arab countries the most popular AI filters change your eye colour.” She goes on to say that this is why coloured contact lenses are so popular among her friends. “These ideals make you feel like your makeup isn’t complete without coloured contacts. It’s a new norm; contacts make your eyes look bigger as well — just like filters do.”

Fifty-year-old Sheena* from the UK admits that she never posts pictures of herself without the help of AI filters. “I feel embarrassed, old and ugly when I see a real picture of myself in comparison to one with an AI filter on it. It’s what I wished I looked like, and I’ve definitely enquired about surgical procedures to help me get there. The only thing stopping me is the expense.”  

For some, constantly consuming AI-generated content has led to more permanent decisions. Jen*, 31, says Snapchat and Instagram filters made it all too easy to consider surgery on her nose. “When I started to get negative comments about my large Greek Cypriot nose in my early 20s, I suddenly wanted the ‘new’, filtered face that was staring back at me through my phone screen.” Jen says this pressure is what led to not one but two nose jobs, and she sometimes feels sad about why she had them done. “I was impressionable and AI got into my head. I paid £5k, too: a huge expense for someone in their early 20s.”

I let AI filters and their ideals get to me, too, opting for nose filler despite the known risks (skin necrosis, cysts, infections and potentially even blindness). I’m gutted to admit it but it’s really helped me to accept myself more, and I hate that I’m conforming to such a problematic culture of Western uniformity.

With this in mind, I reached out to the team behind SheerLuxe and asked whether they think Reem is perpetuating unrealistic beauty ideals for women of colour. I wanted to know what they’re putting in place to stop AI impacting their audience in a negative way. I received no response. When I reached out to Ama Badu (the voice behind the AI model Shudu) for her opinion on the same topic, she said: “Any unrealistic beauty ideals we see in them [AI models] have been created long before their existence. The unfortunate reality of our world is that these beauty standards and ideals are pushed at us constantly, especially as women and even more so as women of colour.”

While I concur, I don’t think this is an excuse to perpetuate harmful ideals. Rather, we should use the rise of AI influencers, models and mascots as an opportunity to challenge the status quo. Badu agrees, noting that this is what makes the virtual space so exciting. 

“We have an opportunity to recreate a world that better aligns with us; where inclusivity and diversity are actualised,” she says. She also claims that a lot of the “fear” surrounding AI is linked to our reluctance to replicate our world online — flaws and all. The idea of creating a seemingly perfect world that’s still entrenched in racism and a lack of inclusivity is scary. It’s not all about aesthetics, though. According to a 2021 report by PR agency MSL, there’s an “influencer pay gap” of 35% between creators of colour and their white peers, which shows how tough it is for minorities to be heard and treated as equals.

Unsurprisingly, people are worried that AI influencers of colour may take opportunities away from real minorities. It’s little wonder that the launch of AI influencer and “editor” Reem sparked similar concerns. “Research tells us that women of colour are almost completely locked out of the UK news industry, making them effectively invisible,” explains Perdita Nouril, beauty editor at Women’s Health UK. “When living, breathing women of colour find it harder than their white counterparts to jump onto the journalist ladder, opting to create fake women of colour reinforces that glass ceiling.” AI perpetuates unrealistic beauty standards that undo all the hard work that has been done to broaden definitions of beauty in recent years, adds Nouril.

So why do AI influencers exist at all? Well, there are some clear advantages for businesses. They’re scalable, cost-efficient and can be in more than one place at once. They’re also completely controllable: Businesses don’t have to worry about an AI figure’s personal thoughts, feelings and opinions clashing with the business' values. While it’s easy to see the appeal here, this screams dystopia to me. Our thoughts and feelings are what make us human. Turning to AI is a scary way to control what users see and, at worst, a thinly veiled attempt to control people of colour, or how we’re perceived. Making a more “palatable” version of us means we can’t be described as “hysterical” or “aggressive”, words that have been used historically to undermine women and Black people with opinions.

As AI advances and becomes more mainstream, we will continue to encounter both the scary and the exciting. We, as humans, won’t always get it right but that’s why it’s so important to talk about it and challenge things we don’t agree with so that we can do better in the future. Dr Betteridge says it’s “crucial” for creators and users of AI technology to be mindful of its negative effects as we move forward. He says we need to strive for a more inclusive understanding of beauty that respects and celebrates our differences, in both the real and digital worlds. Badu notes the importance of employing diverse teams to run AI projects now and in the future, and says that AI should always be obvious to spot. I think we need better regulations. Just as we have rules surrounding advertisements and influencers on social media (like adding #AD or #gifted to posts), we need to call for clear rules and signs to go alongside AI-generated content. 

Perhaps the answer is simply to say no to AI when it doesn’t align with our values. This is exactly what Dove did in its campaign “The Code”, which launched in April. The brand has pledged never to use AI in any of its communications. “We will not stop until beauty is a source of happiness, not anxiety, for every woman and girl,” reads a statement on the brand's website.

I love Dove’s stance here but to hope all beauty brands could adopt this approach would be naive. Realistically, there is no right or wrong answer when it comes to the future of AI in beauty but I hope everyone moves forward cautiously, holding each other accountable with the wise words of Joy Buolamwini’s book, Unmasking AI, ringing in their ears: “The option to say no, the option to halt a project, the option to admit to the creation of dangerous and harmful though well-intentioned tools must always be on the table.”