A 60-year-old woman sat in front of Dr. Sachin Sridharani’s table and showed him an image. It was not a photo of a celebrity or an influencer, it was an AI-generated version of him. Flawless skin, sharp jaw, ageless features.
“She wanted to look like her granddaughter, who was forty years younger,” recalled Sridharani, a Manhattan plastic surgeon. The gap between what AI promised and the results surgery could deliver was huge.
Patients are going to cosmetic surgeon offices with AI generated pictures, special apps and AI filters from ChatGPT and asking the doctor to recreate these impossible versions of themselves, you know, like a shortcut that got out of hand or something.
In an interview with Upper East Side cosmetic dermatologist Dr. Rachel Westbay business insider Said AI image of a patient was a “caricature”: cartoon-like lips, large doll-like eyes. It’s like saying, she said, “I want to look like Ariel from The Little Mermaid,” as if it’s a straightforward, simple request.
Then there’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s 2024 survey, where they found that people who used an AI image enhancer had “significantly higher” expectations of plastic surgery results than patients who didn’t.
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AI image generators produce what doctors call the “Bratz doll” aesthetic: plump lips, big eyes, defined jaw. The technology does not take into account individual facial structure, ethnicity or surgical balance.
“There is no procedure I can do to increase the size of the eyes,” Westbay said. “Even if we could do that, people would still look at you like a cartoon.” Complicated procedures such as rhinoplasty are particularly problematic. AI grapples with the three-dimensional complexity of nose reshaping, often producing results that are surgically impossible.
Dr. Steven Williams, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, has seen patients flock to AI approaches to breast augmentation, body contouring and facelifts. His assessment: “Pixels are easier than surgery.” The barrier isn’t imagination, it’s physics, anatomy and safety.
This is not the first time that patients have brought reference images for surgery consultation. Years ago, Vogue cutouts were common. A 2019 study by the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery found that 72% of surgeons had patients requesting procedures to improve selfies, a condition called “Snapchat dysmorphia”.
