News
Hyper-realistic beauty filters are the new hype on TikTok: “Insecure young people can become even more unhappy about this”
The new lifelike filter “Bold Glamour” on TikTok uses artificial intelligence to give you a “perfect” look. The beauty filter is extremely popular, and therefore not without dangers. “Young people start to compare with their unfiltered appearance, and this can make them unhappy,” says social media expert Laura Vandenbosch (KU Leuven).
Full lips, defined eyebrows, enchanting eyes, long eyelashes, whiter teeth, tight cheekbones and smoothed skin. For example, the new TikTok filter “Bold Glamour” seamlessly transforms your entire face. The filter has been used almost 16 million times. Just days earlier, TikTok was flooded by a similar filter that transforms you into a teenager.
Where with other beauty effects you often clearly notice that there is a filter over your face, the new filters are hyper realistic. The difference between reality and the filter is almost invisible. That’s because the filter uses a form of artificial intelligence that processes data and learns from it to perform better, called “machine learning”.
The filter detects certain features of your face, compares them to a dataset full of other photos of faces and adjusts those features based on prescribed beauty ideals.
WATCH – Luke Hurd has created effects for Snapchat and Instagram and explains the mechanism behind “Bold Glamour”:
Plastic surgery
The filters have been criticized for their impact on some users’ self-esteem. Your face completely merges with the artificial features, which also makes it incredibly realistic for yourself. “Some young people then start comparing themselves to their unfiltered appearance, and that can have a negative effect on their self-image,” says Professor of Media Effects Laura Vandenbosch (KU Leuven). “We see that young people may even gravitate towards plastic surgery to pursue the filtered face.”
During her PhD, researcher Chelly Maes (Leuven School of Mass Communication Research) conducted research together with Vandenbosch into the use of filters by 12 to 18-year-olds. She found a clear link between the use of beauty filters and the intention to undergo plastic surgery later on. Of the 444 respondents, 46.2 percent indicated that they were positive about using plastic surgery for their own motivations, such as to feel better. In fact, 20.5 percent intend to use plastic surgery later.
11 to 12 year olds
“Not everyone is susceptible to the effects of beauty filters. But they make young people who already have low self-esteem even more unhappy,” explains Vandenbosch. “The more young people are motivated to look more beautiful, through all kinds of beauty filters or processed images, the more young people will compare their appearance to it. The filters normalize a very narrow ideal about what beauty is, while it is important that young people see different faces see,” says Vandenbosch.
If such filters make some young people unhappy and even persuade them to change their face, Vandenbosch wonders why social media bets on it. “Social media is aware of the effects of beauty filters. Should they be made accessible so that every TikTok user can test them in a few clicks?”
Especially the youngest users should be protected. “Many 11 to 12-year-olds start using TikTok to have fun, and are not focused on appearance,” Vandenbosch emphasizes. “Through those filters they are confronted with beauty and unrealistic ideals.”
It’s hard to believe it’s been just over a month since we released the new AI-powered Bing and Edge to the world as your copilot for the web. In that time, we have heard your feedback, learned a lot, and shipped a number of improvements. We are delighted by the virtuous cycle of feedback and iteration that is driving strong Bing improvements and usage.
We wanted to share a bit about what we have learned on your usage of Bing and some of the early stats that are helping to shape our future product development.
We are pleased to share that after a number of years of steady progress, and with a little bit of a boost from the million+ new Bing preview users, we have crossed 100M Daily Active Users of Bing. This is a surprisingly notable figure, and yet we are fully aware we remain a small, low, single digit share player. That said, it feels good to be at the dance!
Of the millions of active users of the new Bing preview, it’s great to see that roughly one third are new to Bing. We see this appeal of the new Bing as a validation of our view that search is due for a reinvention and of the unique value proposition of combining Search + Answers + Chat + Creation in one experience.
Secondly not only are we seeing growth in new users, but we are seeing engagement growing as more people are conducting more searches daily.
Two factors are driving trial and usage. One is Microsoft Edge continues to grow in usage as it has done for the last seven quarters based on the quality of our browser. We expect new capabilities, like having Bing search and create in the Edge sidebar, will bolster further growth.
The second factor driving trial and usage is that our core web search ranking has taken several significant jumps in relevancy due to the introduction of the Prometheus model so our Bing search quality is at an all-time high.
As more people come to use the new Bing and Edge, we’re seeing trial and adoption of new capabilities that prove out the value of an integrated Search + Chat experience. Roughly one third of daily preview users are using Chat daily. We’re seeing on average, roughly three chats per session with more than 45 million total chats since the preview began. And 15 percent of Chat sessions are people using Bing to generate new content demonstrating we are extending search to creativity.
We are also pleased to see the new Bing start to be used on mobile phones given the release of our new Bing Mobile app. On the small screen, Answers and Chat, now with voice input, are much more helpful, and have led to a 6X increase in the daily active users from pre-launch levels.
It’s been an amazing 30 days and the team is energized to continue to iterate and improve Bing and Edge to deliver the next generation of search and what we hope becomes your trusted copilot for the web
News
Commotion about long, gray hair of actress Helen Mirren: why is it “not done” to grow your hair from a certain age?
When the British actress Helen Mirren recently appeared on the red carpet of the Berlin Film Festival, it was not her outfit but her haircut that was the topic of conversation. At the age of 77, Mirren has decided to grow her hair. Why is the idea still alive that women of a certain age should cut their hair short?
Actress Helen Mirren is roaming the red carpets to promote her new movie “Golda,” in which she plays the leading role. But instead of the movie, the last few weeks have been talking about Mirren’s haircut. Since the hairdressers were closed for a while due to the corona lockdowns, Mirren says she has not made the effort to cut her hair short. And that has been noticed by many people. Much to the frustration of the actress herself. Mirren doesn’t understand why the stereotype is still alive that older women shouldn’t have long hair.
“The typical criticism is that women with long hair look older, but that cliché makes no sense”, stylist and fashion connoisseur Linda Van Waesberge responds in “The world today” on Radio 1. “If you feel better with long hair, then that’s all that matters.” Van Waesberge also has long locks at the age of 69. “I try to stay as natural as possible as I get older. I’ve always had long hair myself, why would I suddenly change something about it when I get older?”
Is this preference for short cuts in older women something typically Western? Or does this idea also exist elsewhere in the world? “In the East, women often have shorter hair anyway,” says Van Waesberge. “That’s because their hair has a different structure. It falls down like a clear waterfall. That’s why many women cut it straight off for convenience. The African women have their frizzy hair, which also requires a different approach.”
What are the pitfalls?
Western women have the worst hair quality of all. “That means we have to pay more attention to it if we want to grow it,” says Van Waesberge. This is especially true as you get older, because then your hair will become brittle and weaker anyway. “Our hair dries out with age. So if you want long locks as a woman, you have to take good care of your hair.”
“Dull and lifeless hair can effectively make you look older,” warns Van Waesberge. Some even think that older women would look like a witch.” But if you buy the right products to take good care of your long locks, long locks are magnificent, as Helen Mirren shows.
According to Van Waesberge, times are also changing. “Awareness is growing that you shouldn’t take anything from anyone. Our society is in transition.”
The editor-in-chief of NOS Sport resigns after several cases of cross-border behavior were ignored by the editors. This was announced by the Dutch public broadcaster itself. Among other things, there would be reports of bullying and (sexual) harassment.
Last year in November it emerged that a culture of fear had prevailed for years behind the scenes of the popular Dutch talk show “The world is spinning” due to transgressive behaviour. That is why the editors-in-chief of NOS Sport has called on its editors to report inappropriate behaviour
The editors-in-chief were then accused that these reports had been there for a long time, but that nothing was done with them. That writes the NOS itself. An external confidential adviser was appointed to map out the situation.
There would be reports of bullying, (sexual) intimidation, discrimination, verbal aggression and integrity issues from the last twenty years. “The report has provided penetrating insights that affect NOS and force it to take action,” the broadcaster said in a
“New Leadership”
The broadcaster now announces that the four-person editor-in-chief of the sports editors is stepping down to make room for “new leadership” and a culture change. The resignation will be phased “to ensure the continuity of sports coverage”.
Employees can receive professional guidance. In addition, the broadcaster wants to train its managers to identify undesirable behavior earlier and to be able to act accordingly.
These experiences teach us that we need to do better in the future.
Editor-in-chief Maarten Nooter points out that there will be an investigation into the culture at the editorial office and that “we and our organization will be looked critically at. And therefore also at the people who lead it.” A committee is also conducting a broader investigation.
NOS director Gerard Timmer says he is “touched” and apologizes. He emphasizes that this situation does not fit with what the NOS stands for. “These experiences teach us that we need to do better in the future.”
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