If you’ve scrolled through TikTok this week, you may have noticed something that looks a little something like this: someone with flawless skin, plump lips and blindingly white teeth looks stunned at her own beauty and in the camera.
They grab at their face as if questioning whether their ‘perfect’ features are real… That’s because the face they appear to be touching isn’t really their own!
It’s the result of a scarily impressive new face retouch feature within the app that lets you essentially photoshop your entire face in real-time.
And no it’s not a filter!
The new unbelievably, believable feature can alter your appearance in a live video, to accentuate any feature you deem needs changing. It’s honestly terrifying.
Whether it’s smoothing your skin, whitening your teeth or wanting to appear more tan, the retouch filter allows you to do it all!
Our very own Meg Mansel from The Edge Breakfast show gave it a go and did not hold back on what an impact using the feature had on her self-image.
You can adjust the setting to look as “realistic” as possible in whatever setting you are in. Meg decided to put the trickery to the test.
In the clip, Meg demonstrates in real-time how you can alter your face. She adds foundation in the app to smooth her worn face makeup.
She then moves on to her teeth which happened to have a little lippy smudged - that’s the relatability we love to see!
After giving them a quick wipe, Meg adjusts her teeth to a glistening white colour as if she’s just come out of an appointment at a whitening clinic.
It even goes as face as changing Meg’s facial shape and the thickness of her nose.
Unlike most beauty filters, the enhancements Meg has made will not glitch or show any noticeable change in her feature while filming a video. To anyone who isn’t in the same room as Meg at the time of recording, she would appear ‘normal’ to our eyes.
However, Meg can’t believe how she has transformed her face, saying: “It’s kind of messing with my head a bit.”
“It doesn’t look like my face to me.”
She adds: “It’s so disappointing and so frustrating that it doesn’t have to be disclosed, and you will never know.”
With the growing power of AI tools like this are becoming more and more concerning. Why? Because it’s getting increasingly harder to identify what’s real and what’s not.
It’s a great reminder that everything we see on the internet isn’t always as real as it may seem. Honestly, who else is ready to just ditch the social media game altogether?
