TikTok’s new “Bold Glamor” filter (also known as the ‘Bold Glam” filter) changes the way you look in real time, making you look, as one person put it, “like the filter used Kylie Jenner’s face as a model for a machine learning algorithm, and then blended her face with mine.” The ‘in real time’ aspect means that you literally can’t tell whether the hot person in that video is live, or Memorex (although most people who hang out on TikTok are likely too young to recognize that reference). Bold Glamor accomplishes this slight-of-hand by using AI to generate the real-time, follow-along-with-you effects.
Remember when we (and many other outlets) told you about how Instagram and other social media makes teen girls feel bad about themselves? Well, now anybody of any age can experience that feeling.
“I wish I did look like this,” says one user caught on video using the TikTok Bold Glamor filter, posted over on CNN. You can see another break down crying.
And of course, for those who aren’t disturbed by their new “improved” self in videos, they can use those videos to misrepresent how they look to the world, and the possibilities are endless. Dating sites, resumes, job applications (yes, it’s still the case that more ‘attractive’ candidates get the job over even more qualified candidates who don’t have ‘the looks’).
What’s more, according to the Washington Post, while on TikTok Bold Glamor enhanced videos will carry a tag throughout the video saying that it’s been enhanced with the Bold Glamor filter, once you port the video off TikTok that tag disappears. Explains the WashPo article, “Videos with Bold Glamour can be posted across the internet without a label signifying that the user has applied the hyperrealistic effect, and researchers warned that it will get increasingly more difficult to believe what’s real online,” adding a response from TikTok spokesperson Alexa Youssefian which essentially amounts to ‘not our problem’, Youseffian actually saying that “TikTok can only speak to users’ experience on TikTok.”
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In an article in Bloomberg decrying the toxicity of the new Bold Glamor filter, TikTok user @rosaura_alvrz is quoted as saying “You can’t even tell it’s a filter anymore. This is a problem.”
To see an example of the TikTok Bold Glamor filter in action, check out the above-referenced CNN video here, or this video by TikTok user Roman Numeral.
So, what do you think of all this? Would you use this filter? Would you let your kids use it? How would you feel if you discovered someone with whom you were chatting had used the filter to digitally enhance themselves?
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