It will come as a surprise to exactly no one that AI can do things to a photo. Glossy things. Poreless things. Disney-movie-character things. Anyone with a social media account can watch this unfold day in and day out. People who once looked “real” now look impossibly perfected—at least in terms of the unrealistic beauty standards du jour—and is that the Taj Mahal they’re suddenly posing in front of? Or the moon?
Selling a certain image of yourself on social media (for followers, for profit, maybe just for fun) somehow feels different, though, than using essentially fake photos to attract a date. Pretty much every human relationship expert (and probably some AI ones too) would advise against the latter. But I’m not a professional relationship expert, real or artificial. What I am is a very curious person and also a journalist. So! I decided to see what would happen if I swapped my normal dating profile pics for heavily AI-filtered ones.
I uploaded 20 photos of myself to Photo AI (online at PhotoAI.com or as an iPhone app; monthly subscriptions start from $25 per month), which “perfects” your pics and creates backgrounds to your specifications. In my batch were a mix of full-body and close-up shots of me wearing simple outfits in front of unremarkable settings. Minutes later, I was looking at a woman who, sure, sort of looked like me…if that me had C-cup boobs that put my Bs to shame, extremely smooth skin and hair, and an almost glassy gaze. I had also suddenly been places. There was Meg at an Italian vineyard! Meg at the Eiffel Tower! Meg on the Wimbledon tennis court!
Now to watch the matches stream in—which they did, if just a tad more than usual. I don’t mean that in an arrogant way but in an “apparently guys aren’t looking too closely at my pictures” way. No one seemed to care or even notice that AI Meg appeared a bit…illustrated. I was far from the red flag I thought I’d be. My internet bachelors had zero questions about my jet-setting lifestyle. More times than not, they found a way to turn the conversation back to themselves. Evidently, fishing pics will always be the most interesting.
"i felt far more self-conscious than usual, worrying I’d be a disappointment IRL"
Even when I took my experiment to the next level by going on in-person dates: nothing. My only issue was an internal one; I felt far more self-conscious than usual, worrying I’d be a disappointment IRL. I guess I wasn’t—some of these matches asked me out again.
It made me wonder if the men I’ve met on apps have all been this oblivious or if we’re just so used to seeing airbrushed, barely real versions of ourselves and others that we’ve become totally desensitised or, worse, indifferent.
I ultimately passed on the second dates. It turns out that a lack of attention to detail is kind of a turn-off for me.
This article appeared in Issue 01 of Cosmopolitan Australia, originally from Cosmopolitan US. Get your copy and subscribe to future issues here.
