People Are Now Getting Plastic Surgery to Look More AI-Generated

Cosmetic patients are bringing machine-made selves into the clinic.

AI has already changed so much in how we talk and think. We’re all using more AI words like “delve” or “tapestry” in our online communication and, perhaps not surprisingly, studies already suggest that AI chatbots could be making you stupider.

Now, AI has slipped into another facet of our superficial existence: our looks.

Plastic surgeons and cosmetic dermatologists say patients are increasingly arriving at appointments with AI-generated portraits of themselves. They come in asking for smoother skin, sharper jaws, bigger eyes; they want their bodies edited into a kind of machine-made perfection. The problem is that you can’t just edit your body like an image.

The “Bratz doll” aesthetic

Cosmetic surgery has always sold a sort of fantasy. Whether it’s a younger face, a flatter stomach, or just a different aesthetic, the point is usually to get the body closer to a fantasy. Traditionally, this idealized image has been shaped by movie stars, magazine covers, or, more recently, Instagram filters. In 2019, the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reported that 72 percent of surgeons had seen patients seeking procedures to improve how they looked in selfies — a trend often described as “Snapchat dysmorphia.”

Well, now we’re starting to get into “AI dysmorphia” territory.

Instead of asking to resemble a celebrity, patients can now bring in a synthetic version of themselves. The idea may at least seem more grounded because it preserves their basic identity while quietly changing nearly everything else. But some plastic surgeons aren’t happy at all.

Rachel Westbay, a cosmetic dermatologist in New York, described how one woman brought in a caricature-like image with huge doll-like eyes generated by ChatGPT. 

“It’s like saying I want to look like Ariel from ‘The Little Mermaid,’” Westbay told Business Insider. “I was shocked.”

×

Get smarter every day...

Stay ahead with ZME Science and subscribe.

Daily Newsletter
The science you need to know, every weekday.

Weekly Newsletter
A week in science, all in one place. Sends every Sunday.
No spam, ever. Unsubscribe anytime. Review our Privacy Policy.

Thank you! One more thing...

Please check your inbox and confirm your subscription.

Westbay says the AI aesthetic is like a “Bratz doll” look: big lips, big eyes, and a chiseled jaw.

The problem isn’t vanity, it’s expectation

The problem here is that this is more than just a beauty trend. Just like how AI is changing how we talk and think, it’s changing how we feel we should look. It’s a collision between three powerful forces: cosmetic medicine, social media insecurity, and generative AI’s ability to manufacture a more seductive version of reality on demand.

“Because the image still looks recognizably like the patient, it can feel more attainable than a celebrity reference. That may make the fantasy more powerful. The patient is not thinking, I want to become someone else. They may be thinking, This is the better version of me that already exists somewhere. But the image is not bound by anatomy, aging, healing or surgical safety, so it can create expectations that no procedure can responsibly meet,” says Dr. Waqqas Jalil.

Of course, beauty filters aren’t new. What’s new is that these powerful AI tools may go further by letting users negotiate with a machine that seems to understand them.

An AI system can respond to prompts, revise an image and generate many versions of a person’s appearance. It feels less like a distorted mirror and more like an adviser.

When someone asks for a more youthful, refined or “ideal” version of themselves, the AI delivers. “What a great idea!” It makes it seem easy and drives people’s expectations firmly into an unrealistic realm.

A 2024 survey from Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, cited by BI, found that people who used AI to enhance their images had “significantly higher” expectations for plastic surgery results than those who did not.

AIs and scalpels

There are some helpful use cases for using AI in plastic surgery. Dr. Justin Sacks, a reconstructive plastic surgeon at Washington University, suggested that specialized AI tools could help doctors simulate what procedures can actually achieve. But that’s a different, professional use, rather than just “make me a younger image of myself.”

A responsible simulation might help patients not only a hoped-for result, but also the range of likely outcomes, the effect of age and anatomy, and the trade-offs that come with cutting living tissue.

RelatedPosts

Your Next Therapist Could be a Video Game or a Wearable and It Might Actually Work
The essential read on plastics — a material that changed the world
Good Internet Is Becoming Healthcare Infrastructure — Just Look at the UK
AI is quietly changing how we design our work

Yet that approach brings its own challenges. A surgeon who leans too heavily on a machine could replace one unrealistic image with another kind.

In the meantime, irresponsible use could lead to disappointment.

A 2025 study on AI image-enhancing filters found that exposure to AI photo enhancement may significantly raise expectations for plastic surgery outcomes and may predispose patients to lower satisfaction afterward.

AI beauty tools often flatten faces toward a narrow ideal: lighter, smoother, thinner, younger, more symmetrical, more Eurocentric or more ambiguously globalized. These systems are trained on oceans of online imagery, including fashion photography, influencer culture, celebrity faces, edited ads, and existing beauty biases. They may not understand ethnicity, facial harmony, age, or individual identity. They optimize for a look that gets clicks.

When an AI tool repeatedly returns the same kind of “improved” face — bigger eyes, smaller nose, fuller lips, sharper jaw, poreless skin — if you go down this route, you might just end up looking like every other “enhanced” person.