Over the past week, social media has been flocked with an army of whimsical and powerful superheroes, in reimagined portraits of their posters. The avatars, created with the app Lensa, have garnered significant controversy since reaching the mainstream – not least in the accusations that the app has taken the work of thousands of artists to create its default designs – but these perfected artificial intelligence avatars have also sparked a conversation within the body positivity movement.
Search the term ‘Lensa’ on Instagram and you're met with a sea of muscular arms, chiselled faces and perfected skin. The range of body types certainly appears to fit a certain standard. While the images are beautiful (the most popular are cosmic, colourful and almost fantastical), each body has arguably been ‘perfected’ – breasts are rounded and perky, jaws are sharp and collarbones are accentuated.
Celebrities have even hopped on the hype, including Taraji P Henson, Tommy Dorfman and Jennifer Love Hewitt. But while many are enjoying their reimaginings as these celestial beings, and can no doubt do so without feeling their self-esteem is affected, others have pointed out that the app's go-to edits seem problematic.
Scary stuff.
“Me (visibly fat at a selfie angle) vs some of the sh*t Lensa has produced,” one user tweeted alongside her results from the app, while one Instagrammer unpacked her feelings about her avatars.
“That abhorrent voice reared its head. 'This isn’t actually you. This is the super hot, glamorised version of you. You don't actually look like this',” she writes. “I paid for more pictures, convincing myself that I was trying to see patterns of recurring features, but really it was to see when the 'real, ugly me' would surface.”
She later adds: “I'm thankful to this silly AI-yourself trend as it gave me tools to try to work on that horrid inner voice.”
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The Lensa app asks for 10 to 20 selfies in order to generate its ‘magical avatars’, and can also be used to ‘perfect’ images using retouching tools. For a small fee, it generates numerous themed images like the ones that are currently trending on social media.
For model and body positivity campaigner Sophie Hughes, the platform is a double-edged sword. “I love the creative element of the Lensa avatar feature – I love that you choose the image which you feel represents you the most, I love the psychology behind that self expression and I think there's merit in it being a beautiful way to express yourself,” she tells GLAMOUR.
"However, I think it is a very fine line and a very slippery slope when we think about self esteem and beauty standards. AI promotes an unrealistic beauty standard, there is no denying that, and this app seems to take that one step further. I think as with all social media it can be dangerous in the wrong hands. Young, impressionable hands for example.
A new realm of possibilities.
“I was scouted as a model when I was 15 and for years all I saw was photoshopped images of myself to the point where I barely even recognised myself – my jaw was more chiselled, my nose was slimmer, lips bigger, my hips were non-existent. This was incredibly damaging and in my personal experience, shattered my self esteem, deepened my disordered eating and deepened my hatred for my body which I held to a completely unrealistic standard,” she adds.
Sophie believes that apps like Lensa could drag our progress backwards. “The modelling industry has and continues to move in the right direction, we are getting somewhere with diversity, inclusivity, campaigns showing women with disabilities, skin disorders, scars, stretch marks," she says. “But then the next cycle begins and we have the rise of AI and heavily-filtered images and I don't think we should underestimate just how dangerous that could be.”
Sex and confidence coach Erica Storm is also concerned that the use of AI avatars will further damage confidence and self-esteem amongst users. “I am very concerned on how this will impact us all on a subconscious level,” she tells GLAMOUR.
When was the last time you saw a plus-size avatar? Exactly.
“How can anyone build a healthy relationship with themselves when they feel that society is constantly telling them they're not enough? Using an app to ‘perfect’ who you are is damaging to your self-esteem and mental health as a whole.”
She adds of her work as a confidence and sensuality coach: “I help women connect with their bodies for different reasons – one of the main reasons is individuals not accepting themselves and feeling like they're not enough. We are focused on living in a state of reality that's not real. Social media has shown us the danger of filters and apps creating these images and projecting a level of perfectionism that's not sustainable. What messages are we sending out with these avatars?”
While body diverse Lensa portraits are few and far between on the top posts that come up on search, there are users of the app who felt their avatars celebrated their bodies, including TikToker @BoBerryVIP.
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GLAMOUR spoke to Dr Rachael Kent, an expert in digital health and social media, about the appeal of transformative technologies such as Lensa's AI avatars.
“We have always used media to play around with our appearances and perform different identities, from painted portraits, photography to animation, digital filters, and now AI tools like Lensa,” she says. “These apps have become so popular for a number of reasons, both cultural and technological.”
“Firstly, we can see the rise in popularity of Lensa as a form of escapism and play. Escapism, of course, is not a new phenomenon, but it is certainly accelerated when our day-to-day cultural landscape is not easy to deal with, as it is right now.”
She adds: “Secondly, our social media and filtering apps have become an everyday extension of our lives and ourselves. Transforming ourselves using AI apps is not new, however, perhaps because Lensa offers many different images, we get to see ourselves in a multitude of characters which not only airbrush our faces, but transport us to a different time in history, or fantasy world. Is it the perfect form of play and escapism, or another form of attention-seeking?”
As for whether the popularity of Lensa avatars is damaging the body positivity movement, she takes a more balanced view. “On the one hand, yes, we can see the Lensa AI tool as a form of performativity, showing a curated and idealised self, and we could argue that this trend does not contribute to the body positivity narratives we increasingly see across social media as it is not representing a real and authentic body,” she says.
Channel 4's Dispatches uncovers a seriously concerning level of inappropriate behaviour targeting users as young as 13.
"But I would argue, if we are using an AI tool to perform our identity in different ways, do we not already know and understand this is a characterisation of self, not a true depiction? The Lensa images are clearly not reality, or an authentic face, but are a form of play and augmentation.
“The tipping point exists if and when we become fixated upon these images of ourselves as more desirable or ‘Instagrammable’. Sharing an image for fun is not unhealthy. Only sharing images of ourselves heavily filtered with AI and attempting to pass it off as reality is unhealthy and damaging for our own sense of self-worth and esteem as well as detrimentally impacting others’ mental health online as they might compare themselves to your insta-worthy image. When filtering gets normalised as how we view ourselves and others in our everyday lives, this is when these apps become unhealthy.”
There's no doubt that the current slew of AI avatars are far from realistic – they're mostly painterly, mystical and other-worldly, though some veer more on the life-like side. But in an age of aesthetic comparison, do we really need another ‘lens’ to look at ourselves through, or another editing tool at our fingertips?
Avatars can be a fun way to express and transform yourself, undoubtedly, but proceed with caution – no mystical portrait could ever live up to the magic of you.
When contacted by GLAMOUR, a spokesperson for Lensa said: "Unfortunately, we are not in a position to provide in-depth commentary in regards to standalone experiences. We are sincerely sorry if someone’s personal experience on the app did not turn out as expected. With rare exceptions, users report only minor skews in body image representation across their respective end results.
One thing is for certain: we see many heart-warming, positive comments across our Social Media Accounts shared by folks from various ethnic backgrounds and communities. The Magic Avatars feature is meant to invite one to exercise imagination, encounter various unconventional interpretations of oneself, and choose the ones that resonate with oneself the most."
