By Leah Cox
Social media was once about revealing your true self to the world. Then, filters dominated the photo and video space, allowing users to hide behind Snapchat’s Flower Crown or brighten highlights and intensify shadows through Instagram’s Clarendon filters or apply Tiktok’s beauty filter. With other developments in between, we’re in an era where users can deep fake their way to gaining a large following.
I was inspired to explore this topic after reading “AI Has a Hotness Problem” by Caroline Mimbs Nyce, an article published in The Atlantic on October 24, 2023. Now I know the title of the piece may sound shallow, but I think it’s a really informative perspective on how AI image-generation tools, like Midjourney, Stability AI, and Adobe, are either intentionally or unintentionally slowly, but surely, making unrealistic beauty standards the norm in our daily lives.
But this issue isn’t just about looks—it’s our voices too. Deep fake and ChatGPT are altering human voices and intellect. As with all social media platforms, moderation of content (balancing of the extremes) is a must, but what AI generative tools are doing is convincing people that “hyper-attractive, really-high-cheekbones” are far more common than average-looking people and that human-robot hybrid voices are more “assignment worthy” than real human voices.
I opened this article by stating that social media was once about revealing one’s true self. Sharing real content with real people in a real way. That, at least to me, is the most basic understanding of social media—no matter the platform. But with AI creeping in, almost by surprise, people are sharing fake content with real people in a version of reality. This means that the underlying framework of social media has been eroded. (Many would argue that the underlying framework of social media was eroded a long time ago, thanks to the outrage machine and the attention economy.) Its time has come and gone, and now it’s time that we figure out what modern social media is.
This may sound drastic, but I feel like we’re losing an important part of humanity when we use AI image-generation and generative AI tools. Imperfection is what makes us human, but when we attempt to “cure” that through software that has the purpose to perfect, we lose ourselves in the process. Perfection only produces sameness and kills individuality. I’m not sure we live in a world that can survive the former. If we’re not careful, we’ll lose the one thing that is binding all eight billion of us, albeit loosely: our humanness.
I think we need a pause.
What immediately comes to mind is: the law. Or, the lack thereof. One of the biggest concerns about AI is that it’s virtually untouched by state and federal law. Our government typically responds to crises, we’re reactive. It is often that way with technological advances that happen so fast and make their impact before society and those that lead us have a chance to consider the implications of an innovation. We can’t go back in time to before AI “blew up,” but we can respond right now. Of course, the one thing that gets in the way of this progress is Congress. By no means is this “solution” new, it’s one that both pro-AI and anti-AI individuals have been talking about.
But due to Congress’s lack of ability to agree on most topics, I doubt these laws will come soon. The same goes for the CEOs of these AI-generative companies. There’s so much money to make in the field of AI and algorithms are so effective, that we’ll forever be fighting with our backs against the wall. But I can only imagine the difference if we, the people, make small changes to social media culture.
This “pause” could be in the form of trends that disincentivize the use of AI tools. What if creators and influences stopped using the TikTok beauty filter in an attempt to show their “real selves”? Relatable still remains a key factor in the career trajectory of most influencers. If you can relate to others, they can relate to you. Much of social media makes people want to “attain” or “achieve” what they “don’t have.” Learning to appreciate ourselves, through trends that reject AI generative tools, could be a great start and the beginning of a long-term solution.
Although it has declined in use, BeReal has real potential to shine in a less AI-driven social media environment. The app blew up because people had to take spontaneous pictures of themselves and their surroundings at a specific time. It’s hard to plan perfection in this way. The app literally forced users to be real. And it worked—for a while at least. The app had 20 million users in October 2022 but declined to 10 million users by February 2023. BeReal declined in use for two main reasons. The first is our increasingly shortened attention span and the fact that BeReal uses facial recognition and facial expression recognition software for profile identification. Fears over this, which are legitimate, stem from the possibility of this data being used by law enforcement and the federal government. Lack of privacy scares people. And BeReal didn’t comfort those fears.
There’s much unknown about AI generative tools, especially for the Average Joe who doesn’t live and work in Silicon Valley. But as opposed to fearing this unknown, Joe (the average social media user) has embraced it. And while embracing the unknown is good in many circumstances, in regards to AI, it can be dangerous. We must question and push back against any and all tools that change literal faces and voices (both spoken and written). We’re living in an era where users might have to step up and influence the culture of social media themselves. We may not be able to change the minds of CEOs and members of Congress, but we can use the skills we already know how to implement: trends and influencers. Learning to make the algorithm work in our favor could help us regain power and restore our humanity.
