Disturbing Reflection of Social Media: AI Reveals its ‘Ideal’ Man and Woman

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has reached another remarkable milestone by creating a visual representation of what the “perfect” man and woman might look like. The fascinating insights provided by AI algorithms have analyzed vast datasets to generate these idealized images. As technology continues to push the boundaries of what is possible, this groundbreaking development offers a glimpse into AI’s potential to reshape our perceptions of physical beauty.

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The eye-opening study from The Bulimia Project, an eating disorder awareness group, commissioned AI to create and categorize its idea of a perfect man and woman, though the results show more than just hyper-realistic people. The results show how AI categorizes people and the level of bias the technology has, which is disturbing.

Using AI like Dall-E 2, Stable Diffusion, and Midjourney, The Bulimia Project gathered some interesting findings. When asked to create the images, AI focused on creating people based on social media data. Using tools to scan billions of images of people AI was able to pull characteristics from images with high interaction rates, such as likes, comments, and internet search histories, to then create ideal people.

The Bulimia Project released the following as part of their statement on the AI images,

Considering that social media uses algorithms based on which content gets the most lingering eyes, it’s easy to guess why AI’s renderings would come out more sexualized.

But we can only assume that the reason AI came up with so many oddly shaped versions of the physiques it found on social media is that these platforms promote unrealistic body types, to begin with.

Concluding by saying,

In the age of Instagram and Snapchat filters, no one can reasonably achieve the physical standards set by social media.

So, why try to meet unrealistic ideals? It’s both mentally and physically healthier to keep body image expectations squarely in the realm of reality.

Among the findings, it was observed that roughly 40% of the images representing the “perfect” women featured blonde hair, while 30% had brown eyes, and a majority exhibited olive skin tones. Similarly, the analysis indicated that around 70% of the “perfect” men possessed brown hair, with 23% having brown eyes. Like their female counterparts, a significant proportion of the men were portrayed with olive skin, and nearly half of them were depicted with facial hair. Notably, the images displayed an almost exaggerated quality, with toned physiques, plump lips, flawlessly complexions devoid of wrinkles and pores, and impeccably sculpted noses. These perceived attributes of perfection, are false yet highly sought-after which is part of what the Bulimia Project was hoping to highlight with the project.