How Are We Supposed to Keep Up With AI Beauty Standards?

AI model used in GUESS campaign

Even the most beautiful among us aren’t good enough for the beauty standards of today.

In August’s print edition of Vogue, readers were met with an advert by Guess featuring a model who wasn’t real at all. Instead, the brand used artificial intelligence to generate what they considered the “perfect woman” to showcase their summer collection, according to The Guardian. While the decision stemmed from Guess, Vogue’s platform amplified it, sparking an important conversation about the future of beauty, fashion, and representation.

The use of an AI model in such a globally influential publication raises pressing concerns. In a world filled with diverse beauty—across all shades, shapes, and sizes—the choice to fabricate an idealized digital figure highlights how narrow and exclusionary beauty standards can still be. Rather than celebrating real women, the industry appears to be doubling down on impossible expectations, this time powered by algorithms.

Fashion has long dictated fluctuating ideals: from the appropriation of fuller features and curvier bodies, to the return of extreme thinness, and now toward a digitally constructed perfection. This progression not only erases authenticity but also risks setting standards that no real woman could ever meet. Competing with an algorithm’s version of flawless skin, symmetrical features, and “ideal” proportions creates a benchmark that is not only unrealistic, but entirely unattainable.

The implications extend beyond aesthetics. Women already face daily pressures from systemic inequality, gender-based violence, and societal judgment, to constant scrutiny over their choices and appearance. Introducing AI models into mainstream media compounds these struggles, sending the message that even the most celebrated and accomplished women are not “enough.” While progress has been made in challenging these norms, and unconventional appearances have increasingly been celebrated, the rise of AI beauty threatens to reverse this progress. Presenting a digitally constructed, flawless image as the new benchmark risks setting a standard that no human can attain.

TYLA’s first Vogue cover | VOGUE cover models over the years

The concern is not only about the future of fashion and modelling but also about the impact on self-worth. If young girls are taught to measure themselves against computer-generated perfection, the message becomes clear: even real women, in all their diversity, are not enough.

The decision also raises questions about the impact on cultural icons and role models of today; figures like Bella Hadid, Zendaya, and Billie Eilish, who represent the voices of a generation. If AI begins to replace human representation in fashion, what effect will this have on their influence, and on the self-perception of the young girls who look up to them? More than that, will this issue of Vogue affect these said role models… They are the voices of girlhood and the reasons behind change we could experience in society.

Certainly, the awareness that there’s the possibility of AI taking over their jobs is enough to rock their worlds but what happens to women all over once this happens? The young girls they play role models to... what will they start thinking of themselves? ‘I’m not pretty enough, not thin enough, not blonde enough, not ‘white’ enough; not perfect.

A powerful piece in Barbie (2023) by Great Gerwig

Beauty standards have evolved, resisted, and been redefined over time. Progress has been made in embracing inclusivity and unconventional beauty, but the rise of AI threatens to undermine those strides. Allowing artificial intelligence to set the bar risks undoing years of advocacy and acceptance.

The fashion industry holds enormous power in shaping cultural ideals. Choosing AI-generated models over real human beings suggests a troubling future where authenticity is sidelined for convenience and perfection. It is vital to question what message this sends and to insist that beauty, in all its complexity, belongs to real people, not robotic ideals.

The introduction of AI-generated models as a proposed “ideal” of beauty poses serious risks for how women and young girls perceive themselves. Over the years, society has fought to dismantle rigid beauty standards, moving toward greater inclusivity and the acceptance of people as they are, rather than how they are told they should look.

For many, childhood was free from these expectations. Aspirations revolved around careers, creativity, and role models in media—not body measurements, hair texture, or skin tone. Yet as young people grew older, beauty standards began to shape self-perception, often negatively. Those who did not fit into the dominant ideals of a given era, whether that meant lacking curves, not having a certain waist-to-hip ratio, or not aligning with Eurocentric features, were made to feel inadequate.

Left: Models Ugbad Abdi and Mona Tougaard showcasing a new generation of models. Right: Adut Akech on empowering women designers for femme bodies

The only way forward is refusal to accept that future idealistic beauty standard. Not when we fought so hard to just accept people for who they are, not what they should be. During my childhood, I was unaware of beauty standards, I simply wanted to be a singer and follow my dreams like Hannah Montana, or live out the best of my high school career like Gabriella Montez, become someone incredible like Jo Marche, or have three wild summer loves like Donna Sheridan! The last one only came in when I was 16. However, I grew up not thinking about my hips or thighs or hair texture. But the older I got, the more problematic it became that I was a brown body, with a big chest, wavy hair, skinny to the bone. I hated my body for not having hips, curves, a bbl, small waist and a-cup boobs.

That was the beauty standard back then. It didn’t matter for a while, because we demolished the standards of needing to look the same and have the same body features, we could just be women. Exposing unconventional physical appearances of what being beautiful meant. It was great. We cannot let AI, essentially a robotic ideal, of beauty be the face of what the younger girls see and believe. Not now, not ever, not Vogue. We won’t stand for it. We were made perfectly. Just as we are. As we were meant to be.