The uncanny face in the mirror

AI and aesthetics; being human and looking human

The first warning came from my mother, a trained musician and lifelong lover of classical music. I played her a short piano piece I had “composed” using AI, expecting she’d appreciate the artful imitation of Bach or Mozart. She listened, admitted it was clever, but had clearly found it upsetting. She refused to hear more.

The second warning came from my daughter. I’d made an AI video featuring an AI version of myself frying an egg – a jab at me and a nod to my wife’s complaint about my inability to achieve her soft-yolk standard. My daughter said simply: “Disturbing. Do not create this cursed content.”

Listening to Episode 67 of The Medical AI Podcast, featuring artist Gretchen Andrew, I realised those reactions weren’t random. They were a warning about what AI is doing to our sense of what’s real, beautiful and human.

My daughter pointed me to the uncanny valley which is the idea that when something looks almost human, but not quite, then the closer it gets, the more unsettling it is. The uncanny valley comes from the robotics and design industries but now includes our selfies, screens, even our very identity.

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley#/media/File:Mori_Uncanny_Valley.svg

“The uncanny valley effect is a hypothesized psychological and aesthetic relation between an object’s degree of resemblance to a human being and the emotional response to the object. The uncanny valley is the region of negative emotional response towards robots that seem “almost” human. Movement amplifies the emotional response.”

The uncanny valley makes us look away in distaste. AI-optimised beauty does the opposite, drawing us in. The health risks are in the second category.

Beauty becomes algorithmic

Gretchen Andrew used to work in tech. Now she paints “Facetune Portraits” – oil-on-canvas renderings of faces that have been run through AI-based beauty filters. Each painting shows the distortion: smoothing, puffed lips and exaggerated contours – the scars of “digital conformity”.

Image: https://www.gretchenandrew.com/facetune-portraits/facetune-portraits-gretchen-1

“Oil On Canvas: Limited series unique oil paintings that reveal the hidden scars of social media filters. Made using AI, algorithms and robotics.”

Andrew argues that AI-driven beauty is remaking the definition of attractiveness. AI blends features from multiple ethnicities and individuals so a model from Slovakia ends up with the same lips as a model from Jamaica, and the same jawline as another from India. The result is a “mythical average” that no one in reality possesses. Exaggerated lips, chiseled jaws, and smooth skin, that are all meant to look good in flat, compressed, pixelated smartphone photos.

In earlier eras, beauty ideals existed but they evolved slowly, had cultural context, and allowed variation. Today, AI pushes a single narrow standard onto billions of us, at digital speed.

More than skin-deep: measurable harm

This isn’t just about aesthetics. The harm is real, and documented:

• In a UK survey, 40% of young people said social-media images caused them to worry about their bodies. 
• Teens spending three or more hours per day on social media are at double the risk of depression and anxiety. 
• Reviews link intensive social-media use to body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem and higher risk of eating disorders.

It’s no surprise then, that the numbers of cosmetic procedures, even among men, have surged: jaw-line surgeries, facelifts, injections. For many, the AI-edited face has become the template; real faces, real skin, real human texture have apparently become unacceptable.

For some, this has meant serious risk. Poor regulation, black-market injectables, and cement-like fillers bought online have become a public-health risk.

As Andrew puts it: social media, with AI inside, may end up being the “tobacco of our generation”. We know the harms but keep using it.

Identity, relationships, human connection

Beauty distortions lead to more than plastic surgeries or body-image issues. They also distort our social fabric. We begin to judge ourselves and others through the lens of an algorithmic average. Ageing, imperfection and asymmetry were once markers of humanity but now look like flaws.

If an AI-perfected face becomes the norm, what happens to intimacy and relationships with real people with wrinkles, moods and unpredictability?

Once AI-generated people (or even robots) become plausible stand-ins for human partners, the risk is that we’ll prefer them. They’re always polite, cooperative, perfect. Real relationships, with messiness, conflict and compromise, become harder to value.

When “perfection” becomes a pixelated ideal, does humanity become disposable?

What to do?

The first step is visibility. Bringing these distortions into conversation and using art to reveal them. Showing real faces and AI-edited faces side-by-side.

Gretchen Andrew’s paintings do that, transforming invisible digital edits into visible scars. Her art reminds us that what feels “off” is often right.

We can also choose to value what AI can’t replicate: texture, age, imperfection, variation – the messy, unpredictable beauty of actual humans.

The instinctive discomfort my daughter voiced when seeing the “cursed” video, and the sadness in my mother’s frown are not bugs in human perception but the last lines of defense.

AI won’t destroy beauty. But it will flatten, standardise and market it, out of our control, driven by engagement metrics and cosmetic profiteers.

Real beauty is not an algorithm. It’s humanity.