Pablo Declan for BI
It's easy to identify a photo from the early days of Instagram and Snapchat. Grainy, greenish sunset photos and dog-eared selfies littered social media during the mid-2010s. Augmented-reality filters went viral for their ability to shrink noses and brighten complexions. They weren't fooling anyone, but they weren't supposed to.
Fast-forward nearly a decade, and filters have significantly stepped up their game. Unlike the flower-crown filters of old, which superimposed a mesh face on your on-screen selfie using facial-tracking technology, the latest filters digest the image's pixels to spit out an entirely new face. Today's online world is awash with images of poreless skin, perfectly arched brows, and plump lips, but it's not always clear who's getting a digital facelift and who has had a real one. The faces that hold social currency on social media — with fox-lift brows and buccal fat removed — are increasingly bleeding into real life.
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