As I scroll through my LinkedIn, I can spot multiple people who have updated their profile photos not with an actual picture of them, but with a photo created from artificial intelligence. It looks like them, but not at all. It is as if they met blind, alien artists, described how they looked to the aliens, and then allowed the aliens to replicate them. It's all there, but it's just not right.
For research, I decided to give it a go too. Today, I spent $10 to get 100 AI headshots, and they all scare the absolute shit out of me.
In order to get insulted in 100 innovative ways, I used AI SuitUp(opens in a new tab), an AI-powered service that promises to generate "high-quality headshots that will take your LinkedIn profile to the next level." It's $19.95 for the shots, but I had a TikTok code a friend sent me — TIKTOK50 — and only had to pay $9.97. A steal!
The next step is to upload 15 photos of myself and a selfie, which means scouring through all the photos on my phone and picking out 15 pictures of myself that actually look like me. After battling my own narcissism, I uploaded them and waited the required 40 minutes to receive them.
The 100 photos can neatly fit into a few categories:
Whose limbs are those?
This person looks racially ambiguous. Let's change that.
Me but without bangs
What if we put a wig on them?
Me committing tax fraud
Maybe one or two of them are usable, but the grand majority of them are not. Something about them is forbidding; like M3GAN, it looks human, but is hiding something sinister. I do not trust the person in those photos and, if I was in any position to hire anyone (I am not), I would not trust the threatening AI-generated headshot, either.
There are other platforms you can use to receive your very own freak show of a photo album, but, from what I've seen, they're all equally horrifying.
Your LinkedIn AI headshots are freaking me out. Please stop it.
