Plastic surgeons are increasingly concerned about the rise of \u201cAI face\u201d, as more and more clients arrive in their offices with unrealistic AI-generated visions of what they want to look like.<\/p>\n
Dr Nora Nugent, a cosmetic surgeon from Tunbridge Wells, has seen this first hand. Clients have started coming to her office with photos of themselves beautified by AI and a false expectation that those results are achievable with surgery. She is also the president of the British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, and says many colleagues are having similar experiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can only predict an increase, given the rate AI has been incorporated into every aspect of life,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
People using AI chatbots to generate their ideal faces are increasingly arriving at surgeons\u2019 offices with briefs demanding flawless skin, sharply sculpted cheekbones, refined noses and near-perfect symmetry \u2013 standards that are too time consuming, prohibitively expensive and, in many cases, physically unattainable.<\/p>\n
While AI can control every single pixel, \u201csurgery certainly doesn\u2019t work on that microscopic detailed level\u201d, according Dr Alex Karidis, a surgeon based in west London.<\/p>\n
For many clients, however, those expectations are shaped long before they ever meet a surgeon. Karidis and Nugent describe how psychologically effective AI-generated images can be in defining \u2013 and reinforcing \u2013 clients\u2019 aesthetic ideals.<\/p>\n
Nugent said: \u201cOnce you see an image, it\u2019s wired into you.\u201dKaridis agreed, describing AI images as being \u201cseared\u201d into patients\u2019 minds, and said colleagues had recently been inundated with them.<\/p>\n
Surgeons are also keen to emphasise that cosmetic surgery outcomes are far from guaranteed.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe patient has to understand that there is human variation in how they heal, how they age and what can be done\u201d said Nugent. \u201cI say to patients beforehand: it\u2019s not limitless what I can do in surgery. Neither of us control everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alex Karidis says cosmetic surgery cannot replicate the microscopic precision \u2013 or fantasy-level perfection \u2013 produced by AI. Photograph: Linda Nylind\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
To better understand the phenomenon, I asked an AI agent to recommend cosmetic procedures and generate images for Karidis to review. As I requested increasingly dramatic alterations to my appearance, the agent eventually began warning me about the feasibility of the operations I was proposing.<\/p>\n
But Karidis says that when clients do their deep-dive research into cosmetic procedures, they often fixate on the images and ignore \u201call the noise\u201d around them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s the bottom line for everybody. The moment you show them something like that, that\u2019s it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Surgeons have also noticed consistencies in the aesthetics of \u201cAI face\u201d, particularly hyper-symmetry \u2013 something AI can generate effortlessly but which is often impossible to recreate in real life.<\/p>\n
If one of your eyes is a few millimetres higher than the other, AI can alter that in seconds, according to Dr Julian de Silva, a Harley Street cosmetic surgeon. But rearranging pixels is not the same as rearranging anatomy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s impossible to change [eye level] because that\u2019s actually set in bone, and your brain sits behind the orbits. You cannot safely change the position of the orbits,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
De Silva added that when AI edits a client\u2019s photo, it frequently defaults to widely accepted beauty ideals: for women, a V-shaped jawline, a sweeping \u201cogee curve\u201d along the cheekbones and a heart-shaped face; for men, broader jawlines, lower eyebrows and fuller upper eyelids.<\/p>\n
But De Silva is also concerned about another growing trend: clinicians sharing surgery results on social media that appear astonishingly effective, but which he suspects may themselves be AI-generated.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remember looking at one of these last week and I looked at it over and over,\u201d he said, recalling a video in which a patient appeared to have been made to look 30 years younger. \u201cAnd then the third time I watched it, I could see \u2026 the hands had six fingers.\u201d<\/p>\n
My trip to the surgeon<\/p>\n
Having generated some beautified versions of myself, I asked Karidis to share his thoughts on AI\u2019s recommendations.<\/p>\n
I told the chatbot I was considering cosmetic surgery and asked for \u201csome enhancements\u201d to my photo. I also asked it to explain the virtual surgeries it had performed. It gave me a rhinoplasty and septoplasty, \u201crefining the nasal tip and straightening the bridge\u201d. It also applied \u201ca subtle blepharoplasty [eyelid lift] and brow refinement\u201d.<\/p>\n
Isaaq before (left) and after various AI \u2018enhancements\u2019. Composite: Isaaq Tomkins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
Karidis said the rhinoplasty was relatively modest and the blepharoplasty barely noticeable, but estimated the work would still cost about \u00a325,000.<\/p>\n
I then asked my virtual assistant to give me \u201chunter eyes and a more masculine face\u201d. It recommended chin implants, buccal fat removal, infraorbital augmentation, another blepharoplasty, facial stubble grafts and a handful of other procedures.<\/p>\n
Before (left) and after AI\u2019s recommended chin implant and other \u2018masculine\u2019 alterations. Photograph: Isaaq Tomkins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where things start to get a bit silly,\u201d Karidis said. \u201cIt looks like its given you someone else\u2019s eyes.\u201d He says the chin implant is unnecessary, and that I would \u201cpay the price\u201d for the buccal fat removal later on in life as my face naturally became more gaunt with age.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf one were to theoretically do everything it suggests, it would easily be \u00a3100,000-plus and still probably wouldn\u2019t look anything like this, not to mention you\u2019d be exposed to potential significant side-effects and recovery.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMake me look like more of a chad,\u201d I then instructed the chatbot. It responded with further recommendations, including a neck lift, brow lift, two types of custom implant and full ablative laser resurfacing to create \u201cperfectly even, fresh skin\u201d.<\/p>\n
Before (left) and after AI\u2019s \u2018chad\u2019 revisions, including a neck and brow lift. Photograph: Isaaq Tomkins\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where things start to look scary,\u201d Karidis said. \u201cWhat\u2019s with the whopping great big dents along your jawline angle? It looks like chunks of tissue have been removed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs to neck lift and brow lift, that\u2019s frankly untrue. I don\u2019t see any evidence of any lifting in these areas. Tissues like the eyebrows seem to have been lowered rather than lifted. Your original complexion looks much better than this.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Plastic surgeons are increasingly concerned about the rise of \u201cAI face\u201d, as more and more clients arrive in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":689532,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":["post-689531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689531\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/689532"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}