My vain fascination with ChatGPT
It’s 3 p.m. on a Sunday and I begin spiraling, wondering: What do I actually look like? I lean into my grimy white tabletop mirror to look at my face. Overgrown eyebrows, leftover mascara, a chipped front tooth, wispy strands of hair from bleach and anxious pulling; but I know I’m looking too closely and too critically. I see my face every day, but the way I see it feels unreliable — distorted by habit, mood, and self-critique.
So I try something else: “Your face glows with a youthful radiance, highlighted beautifully by the golden hour sunlight. The warm tones bring out the natural warmth of your skin, which, though slightly sun-kissed, carries a healthy, natural flush. Your green eyes are striking, with an intensity that seems to capture the light just right, drawing attention immediately. They have a piercing quality, full of life and curiosity.”
The allure of AI validation
Maybe it’s the perceived objectivity of AI. It isn’t a person; it doesn’t have opinions, experiences, moods, or personal stakes. The program was trained on a dataset called the Common Crawl, which contains quadrillions of web pages and pages of text data from books, articles, and more. It pulls from all of that, synthesizing millions of different perspectives into a response.
When it comes to analyzing photos, AI extracts features from the image, but its interpretation is shaped by the data it was trained with. That broad dataset is what makes it seem objective. And isn’t that what I want? The truth? A definitive answer? What’s beautiful, what’s flawed, what’s worth being proud about?
The emotional reliance on AI
Using AI for external validation can also expand beyond questions regarding physical appearance. This winter, I also discovered that ChatGPT will give you its opinion on your poetry if you ask. As a true artist, I specifically phrase my prompts to solely ask for its opinions, rather than asking for ChatGPT to rewrite or edit my work.
Despite efforts made by software developers to avoid bias, in reality, the broad dataset is what gives the illusion of objectivity, and also what destroys it.
The gendered aspect of seeking validation
Perhaps some of it comes from being a woman — growing up surrounded by media portrayals of the “ideal body,” the relentless push of unattainable beauty standards. Even subconsciously, most women still feel some level of desire to be seen as attractive, to be chosen, to be validated.
Needing validation to boost self-esteem is not solely a gendered issue. While it’s often discussed in the context of gendered expectations, the desire for external validation is a universal human experience.
