NEWSPerfect Poise or Subtle Toys: Are Celebrities Generating AI Photos?
Aug. 5 2024, Published 1:29 a.m. ET
Squinting at those beautiful photos on Instagram and LinkedIn and feeling suspicious about how celebrities get their photos to look that good? Poised, professional, with crisp lines, flattering lighting, bright smooth skin and just the perfect smile—it's presenting a life of a million dollars.
And then when mere mortals try to emulate this, forking out hard-earned cash for a professional photoshoot, it is never quite the same. The smile is a little too forced, acne is still showing through underneath the concealer, and there's just too much shine on the forehead to properly convey effortless ease.
This is something a mere filter and some color balancing can’t fix; the awkwardness of the pose and picture itself is the restricting canvas the artist is left to work with. Celebrities are also privy to intensive coaching on how to strike flattering angles over many years.
The celebrity world is, of course, no stranger to using a tool or a secret hack to elevate their appearance to an almost otherworldly status. So, with AI booming, is it possible that celebrities are leaning into more than a little AI-tinkering to get their poised pose just right? Could there be some AI generation software being used?
Poised Online Presence
Time and time again, celebrities are caught out and about in compromising positions and less flattering angles and displaying less than perfect skin and hair.. But this does little to negate the hard work celebrities put into curating poised and elegant appearances on their professional online profiles.
For years, this process of creating a polished image has involved a huge budget and dedicated team looking out for every small detail to bring the picture of perfection to the wide audience of avid supporters—and more than a few haters.
Keeping up the battle between public appearances and online presentation while maintaining that poise is no small feat. But maybe now AI is lending a helping hand.
AI: The New Poser
There are rumbles that new methods harnessing the growing power of AI may be in use by celebrities, their PR teams, and social media managers. These advanced AI, in the likes of Portrait Pal, create effortlessly immaculate portraits by first creating a model from pre-existing photographs and then generating a new image from this data.
Call it a modeling session without the modeling, or posing for photos via virtual statistical models. In the celebrity world, this could result in generating instagrammable content without having to get the celebrity physically transported, made-up, and working on location for a photoshoot.
Picture a martini in one hand and a small gallery of pre-existing photographs on a smartphone in the other and the process has almost completely been described.
In the time it takes to check all the socials and get through the drink, a new set of gleaming, internet-ready portraits have been generated.
Science Fiction Made Real
It may sound like science-fiction, but this kind of realistic AI image generation is now possible. The new frontier of AI image alteration has moved on from mere augmentation, such as those we are accustomed to using with Instagram filters, to creating brand new images in the likeness of a real human using a few base photos provided by the user.
So now, not only have parts of the image been altered, the whole image has been generated from scratch. The celebrity was never actually standing there in a crisp blouse and blazer, staring with intellectual sincerity deeply into the lens. They were sipping cocktails by the pool!
So, how specifically might a celebrity do this? The technology is different depending on the software used, but in some cases all a celebrity might have to do is upload a small handful of photos taken from various angles and in different lighting. Complex AI technology creates a model of the user and then uses this to generate a new image, combining the information gleaned from across the submitted photos.
Business Savvy Boss Babes
As AI evolves, businesses are looking for ways to harness the power of this complex model of computing to improve margins, efficiency, and brand reputation. The brand and business of the celebrity is no different. If there's an easier and faster way to get to the end result of bottom lines and brand image—and still look sexy—why not harness technology like PixelPose? All the more reason to wonder if this is what the celebrities are doing!
Infamous Met Gala Controversy
This year, the internet fell in love with celebrity Met Gala looks—looks that celebrities never actually wore. Images of Rihanna and Katy Perry in gorgeous floral gowns made it to some influencers' top lists of the best looks at the Met Gala despite these being entirely generated using AI.
Of course, these images weren’t generated by the celebrities themselves or their PR teams, and so their faux nature was immediately made obvious to the public, not least by the number of spectators that attended the actual event and saw that those gowns never made it down the red carpet.
However, until these voices were made known across the internet, for a brief moment, the world believed these were genuine photos from the event. Seeing now how believable such images can be, the idea that celebrities are using image generators for their own online curated presence no longer seems far-fetched.
This is especially true when considering the control celebrities can have over a narrative in an event they host. Or ‘host’. Binding NDAs signed by everyone working for celebrities may be keeping their AI secrets under wraps.
Hopeful AI
Despite the widespread knowledge and use of photo filters and editing apps, celebrities continue to come under fire for augmenting their photos. Accusations often point to impossible beauty standards and the impact of such images on young brains.
However, the Met Gala controversy points to a happier possibility associated with the use of AI. The photos were successful regardless of not drastically altering the way a celebrity looked, the AI harnessed the faces we know and love, to bring new creative looks to the world.
So is there some celebrity AI tinkering going on? You decide.
