2016 marked a pivotal year in the introduction of facial filters. Look at any selfie from this period, particularly from a certain few Kardashian sisters, and you’ll more than likely see Snapchat’s renowned dog filter. Somehow, we all collectively bypassed the obscenity that was dog ears, nose, and tongue in every selfie that we took because the dog filter blurred our skin and made our eyes ever so slightly larger. It was our first taste of filter enhancements, and we have only gotten hungrier.

Fast forward 9 years, and we’ve advanced to the point of filters becoming often undetectable and built on tropes much more harmful than the facial features of a dog. TikTok’s famous ‘Bold Glamour’ or ‘Natural’ filter are just a few examples of the somewhat ‘second skins’ that many of us can no longer be on camera without. They won’t give you animal features, just a version of you, ‘but better’. You, but more resemblant of the eurocentric beauty standard. You, but if you had 5ml of filler injected into your face. You, under the guise of artificial intelligence (AI) reinventing our perceptions of beauty.

This isn’t an exaggeration, or a myth. Amongst almost every aspect of social media and technology that AI influences, of course facial filters are a huge player. Within these systems, AI views ‘beauty’ and facial features almost like math, comprised of averages, and datasets, and statistics that ultimately determine the final filter that TikTok spits out. AI is used as a tool to detect features and tropes aligned with physical attractiveness and beauty, often based on Eurocentric beauty standards, then encodes these into the filters we use. As a result, the bulk of popular filters only further perpetuate the narrowed standards of beauty that we are already pushed. Simply put by Castillo-Hermosilla et al., (2023), beauty filters are the product of societies unrealistic beauty standards yet further perpetuators of these ideals too. They notoriously emphasise features such as lighter skin and smaller noses, conforming specifically to euro-centric, ‘white beauty’ standards. Pair this with skin smoothing and wrinkle erasing features, and we have a filter system complicit in racist and ageist stereotypes that ultimately seeks to have us users looking younger, whiter, and more ‘beautiful’. It is critical that we are able to step back and examine the implications of popularising and normalising filter use, understanding the threat this causes not just to our idealised perception of self, but to societies’ depiction of beauty as well.

The personal implication is what British cosmetic doctor, Tijon Esho coined: ‘Snapchat Dysmorphia’, encompassing the way many women have shifted from aspiring to look like celebrities and public to figures to aiming to look like their ‘filtered self’. Your filtered face is now the mood board in a way that was previously women from TV or magazines. We could argue this is more harmful in many ways as it is not only reinforcing these euro-centric, racist, and ageist ideals into our dream-self, but actively deterring us against our ‘actual features’. When you begin to prefer and strive towards your ’filtered face’, you will not only lose confidence and love for who you are detached from the lense but also potentially undergo unhealthy or damaging lengths to match your ‘ideal’ self.

From this perspective, it clear that facial filters and the role of artificial intelligence in creating these pose a huge threat to society, and more specifically to the user base of largely women. We cannot view facial filters as ‘harmless’ or simply a form of expression when it is clear they are complicit in reinforcing stereotypical, narrowed, and often racist perceptions of beauty. They are the product of harmful perceptions of what beauty is, and by using them, we are only perpetuating that cycle both upon ourself and within society.

Your ’actual face’, devoid of filters and the lense of TikTok or Instagram is real beauty, of which AI could never replicate the diversity and intersections of to reflect us all. Let that be the one you show up in and capture on camera, and society and your future self will thank you for documenting who we really are.