A change of season has a way of making your closet, your haircut, and perhaps your entire personality feel due for an upgrade. Maybe you want a fresh look for the months ahead. Maybe you’re bored of doing your makeup the same way every morning. Or maybe we’ve all spent a little too much time looking at ourselves through our phone cameras.
That familiar urge to change something may help explain why people are uploading selfies to ChatGPT and asking how to “glow up.”
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The results have prompted everything from “I want hair extensions now” to questions about whether the suggested changes are truly achievable — and why we’re asking a chatbot to tell us how to look better in the first place. (As one X user put it, the trend is “Dystopian as hell.”) Naturally, I wanted to see what the fuss was about. So I snapped a selfie and uploaded it to ChatGPT.
I wanted to re-create the glow-up boards I’d seen people sharing on X. Here’s the prompt I arrived at to get this result after trying it myself (after a few rounds of trial and error).
Credit: Olivia Tauber/ChatGPT
After attaching a clear selfie, paste:
Turn my selfie into a personalized glow-up guide and before-and-after image. Study my visible features and choose four to six realistic changes I could make with hair styling, makeup, or accessories. Tailor the suggestions to me rather than applying a generic beauty trend.
Create one landscape board with my original selfie on the left labeled “Before,” a realistic preview on the right labeled “After,” and a column titled “Your glow-up plan.” In that column, explain exactly how to recreate each change, including what to ask for at a salon and how to apply any suggested makeup. Add four labeled close-up details along the bottom.
Keep my face, eye color, skin tone, age appearance, and natural skin texture recognizable. Do not reshape my features or make my hair unrealistically thick. Keep the lighting and angle similar on both sides, and make all text clear and readable.
So, did the prompt reveal the secret to a whole new me? Not quite. I deliberately uploaded a no-makeup selfie to see whether ChatGPT would suggest anything I hadn’t tried. Most of its plan (brushed-up brows, defined lashes, blush, and a lip color close to my natural one) was already my usual makeup routine. The hair layers gave me something to think about, but “wear lip gloss” wasn’t exactly the beauty breakthrough I’d been waiting for.
Online, though, plenty of people were impressed. One X user wrote that ChatGPT “actually gives great glow up advice,” while another marveled at how a few small changes could make someone look so different — even if they couldn’t quite pinpoint what had changed.
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Others thought they could identify the changes — and that they went beyond styling. “It’s 90% fluff,” one user wrote. Another argued that while hair can change, the image also appeared to alter eyebrow and jaw structure. Another said the AI “elongated your face” and added “some extra forehead.” One commenter objected that these results can be “unachievable” because the images alter a face’s natural shadows and features. A few users online (interestingly, all male) felt they preferred their “before” pictures better.
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There was also the question of where all those selfies go. “go girls provide your biometric data to ai repositories,” one commenter joked. That isn’t verified, but uploading your face does mean handing the image to OpenAI. According to its file-storage guidance, photos uploaded to ChatGPT can be saved in your Library, and deleting the chat won’t necessarily delete the photo; you may need to remove it from Library separately. OpenAI also says uploaded files may be used to improve its models if “Improve the model for everyone” is on. You can turn that setting off before submitting a selfie.
For some people, one image is only the beginning. In a Reddit post about building a six-month glow-up plan, a user described giving ChatGPT their skincare, hair, and body goals and asking for a step-by-step routine. In the comments, one person said they did something similar, entering an ingredient list for 30 products, then asking the chatbot to turn its picks into a shopping list and an instructional guide. Others use AI to consider color palettes, sort through a makeup collection, or put together outfits from clothes they already have. Creator Marina Gudov’s uploaded photos of herself and her makeup products so ChatGPT could assess the colors in a viral TikTok series.
But a request for a new makeup routine can turn into something more consequential. Some glow-up prompts ask ChatGPT to act like a dermatologist, assess skin concerns from a photo, or build a treatment schedule. Others invite it to suggest cosmetic procedures. One beauty creator told ChatGPT, “Tell me what to do, no matter how crazy. I’m open to anything.” The resulting “summer glow-up” plan included microneedling, Botox, and filler, according to Dazed.
All these recommendations can sound authoritative even though a chatbot has not examined the person or taken a medical history. The American Academy of Dermatology cautions that chatbots can draw on inaccurate information and advises checking skin-care decisions with a dermatologist.
It’s hard to separate this trend from a culture that keeps finding new ways to tell us we could look better. Scroll through beauty TikTok and “getting ready” can look like a full overnight shift. In the morning shed, creators go to bed wearing combinations of hair wraps, face masks, under-eye patches, face tape, chin straps, and even tape over their mouths, then film themselves peeling everything off in the morning. Elsewhere on the feed are red-light masks and skin-care products made with ingredients such as beef tallow or salmon-derived DNA.
Men are in on the glow-up conversation, too, though some have a different word for it: looksmaxxing. It can mean a better haircut or skin-care routine, but its extremes include food restriction and “bone smashing” — hitting your face in the hope of reshaping it. Prominent influencer Clavicular has even claimed to use methamphetamine to stay lean.
There’s a reality check for the “after” images, by the way. Hair and makeup artists told Axios back in April that clients increasingly arrive with AI-generated inspiration photos. A stylist can work toward a color or add volume with extensions, but the picture might also have invented a hairline, impossible roots, or a face that looks different under the digital makeup.
Personally, I didn’t see a dramatic difference between my “before” selfie and the AI “after.” The more useful part was asking what I could actually do. I can see myself using ChatGPT to sort through makeup I already own, suggest a routine for my skin type, or plan meals around my preferences and budget. But if you want my take, skip the makeover image and ask a specific question. Your eyebrows do not need a performance review. (Trust me.)
