Facetuning in the news

The British Psychological Society

New study unpicks the influence of instant beauty filters on body image and attitudes.

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5 Key Learnings from the BPS Article:

1. Self-Comparison is Most Damaging: Comparing your own appearance to a filtered version of yourself has a stronger negative impact on body image than comparing yourself to filtered images of others.

2. Negative Impact on Self-Perception: Using beautifying filters (especially slimming ones) leads to increased dissatisfaction with one's actual appearance, a greater desire to lose weight, and a stronger focus on physical appearance as core to self-worth.

3. Increased Bias Towards Others: Using these filters can lead to harsher judgments about others' bodies, specifically increasing anti-fat attitudes.

4. Perpetuation of Unrealistic Standards: The act of using filters reinforces and perpetuates narrow, often unattainable beauty standards, creating pressure for both the user and others to conform.

5. Homogenization of Beauty: Filters are ubiquitous and potentially promote a specific, often Westernized or White, standard of beauty, raising concerns about their impact on diverse users (though the study sample was limited).

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Connecting Facetune Portraits

1. Visualizing the Internal Conflict: Gretchen's work physically manifests the tension the article describes. By scribing AI filter effects onto paintings, she makes visible the "double portrait" of reality vs. the desired, filtered self that the article identifies as psychologically damaging ("reality meeting desire," "tension between who we are and who AI... says we should be").

2. Critiquing the Source of Negative Self-Perception: The artwork directly engages with the tools (AI filters like Facetune) that the article identifies as causing negative self-perception and linking self-worth to appearance. By incorporating robotics and AI into the painting process, she foregrounds the technology driving these psychological effects.

3. Exposing the Homogenizing Effect and Implicit Bias: Gretchen's series explicitly tackles the "homogenizing impact of this monocultural, single AI beauty standard" across diverse faces ("Contestants from 100 different countries"). This directly reflects the article's concern about filters promoting a single look and relates to the finding that filter use increases bias by showing how diversity "disappears" under the algorithmic ideal.

4. Making the Invisible Visible to Challenge Standards: The article discusses how filter use perpetuates standards. Gretchen's work disrupts this by making the normally "seamless and invisible" digital alterations visible, messy, and physical ("scars of the hidden 'perfections'"). This act exposes the artificiality and challenges the very standards the filters reinforce.

5. Highlighting Ubiquity and Algorithmic Influence: The article notes the widespread use of filters (90% of young women). Gretchen's use of popular AI filters and titling ("Facetune Portraits") grounds her work in this ubiquity. Her process highlights how algorithms are actively shaping not just online images, but our perception of beauty itself ("accepted as much by the algorithms as by our peers").​​​​​​

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