The AI portrait is me, and it’s most definitely not me. Armor and blazing-orange sunsets aside, the features in the portrait are too smooth, the imperfections blotted out with a virtual airbrush, sharpness and contrast amped up to unlikely extremes. The whole balance of facial composition is off, and the effect is mildly eerie. Yet who would not be intrigued by such an otherworldly presentation of their own face? Minutes earlier, in a burst of curiosity and boredom (the ingredients for most forms of social media engagement), I’d run my face through a popular AI effect on TikTok called “AI Portrait.” What did I hope to see? Certainly, a more idealized version of myself. This is always the promise of AI portraiture. We come to it not for accuracy, but for flattery. I expected to preen over my image, privately, the way many of us do when we encounter a particularly good representation of ourselves. But what I actually felt was the disorientation of unexpected recognition, even as I understood that the portrait had absolutely nothing to do with reality. I have very few selfies in my camera roll. I state this not as a humblebrag, but as evidence of my lack of interest in seeing my own face. Taken further: I have a stubborn inability to truly see myself at all. At restaurants with fancy mirrored installations, I’ve been known to smile politely at my own reflection, not recognizing it as an extension of myself. When I pass a store window, I’m always surprised by the face that blinks back. A stranger’s face. And when glancing through photos of myself, I feel a sense of rising contradiction, a desire to proclaim, “That’s not me.” As if I really know what I look like. Maybe this isn’t an uncommon phenomenon. Many of us have a distorted sense of our own faces, imagining our features to be either more classically attractive or troll-like than others might judge them to be. Our self-image will always be a bit skewed because the image we hold in our heads is composed of all the previous iterations that have existed before—our gawky preteen years, the inadvisably daring haircuts, the polished bridal visage—each layered thinly atop the previous one, until what’s left is not so much a cohesive reference for the present, but a weird amalgamation of time and identity. What we see in our minds is an uncanny valley version of ourselves. In this way, perhaps, our self-image is not so different from what we might get from an AI effect. Though AI can be an engaging tool for self-reflection (literally), I also understand the pitfalls of AI portraiture. After all, when we present anyone with an overly idealized image, especially an increasingly large collection of younger folks interested in AI, there’s a sense of danger. Many of these filters also have a tendency to Westernize features, aligning them with Anglo beauty standards. They smooth out the variation in our faces to the point that we become robotic, even clone-like. We become the thing we fear. AI, like all waking dreams, is a haunting promise, one that illuminates the possibilities inside ourselves—as well as the disappointment of facing our precarious selfhood. Artificially generated portraiture, especially with accessible filters and effects, manages to center our desires in a way that other humans just can’t. It can give us the kind of sustained attention that would be solipsistic to demand from a living person. It makes sense, then, that AI filters transforming users’ faces into Manga characters, space cowboys, and glossy heroes have become so popular. They offer the great gift and indulgence of close attention, even if it’s an artificial sort of consideration. The images we see are not true in the literal sense of the word, but perhaps they reflect a sort of psychic veracity. They offer a sense of “what could be,” that glimmer of an alternate reality where we may be pioneers or glamour-pusses or whatever we privately desire but are most afraid to reveal to the world—and perhaps hesitate to admit even to ourselves. Why, you might ask, would I recognize myself in an AI portrait and not an actual photograph where I’m sprawled on the sofa with my family? In real life, I’m a pretty ordinary person. I would help someone who’s fallen on the sidewalk, but I couldn’t lift a car off a trapped child. I’ve never been accused of athleticism, and I would not be eager to take up arms during a war, even for the noblest of causes. But in my dreams, I’m wildly valiant. When I see injustice, I don’t hesitate. I’m able to give cutting and quotable rebuttals to bigots. I can step in front of a moving car to save a rambling octogenarian. I sail through the rafters on a makeshift grappling hook. Even if I’m not wearing literal armor, in my slumbering mind, I’m reinforced by dauntless heroism that I have never exhibited. So when I see that AI portrait, I’m tickled by the alignment between my dreaming life and my outward presentation. I can’t help but want to share that with others. I’m hopeful, on some level, that they will see a glimmer of Hero Me in Real Me. My husband says, succinctly and satisfyingly, “Hot.” When I show my six-year-old daughter, rather shyly, she squints and shoots me a dubious look. “That’s definitely not you,” she says, in immediate rejection of Hero Me. After a pause, she demands, “Let me see that again.” The second time around, her eyes travel across the screen, taking time to study the image. She notes my angular brows. The sheen of silver on my breastplate. The slight raise of my chin. The effect of seeing your parents outside their usual circumstances is a little like seeing them in the nude. Embarrassing for everyone. “Mom!” she cries at last, her voice equal parts wondering and dismayed. “It looks like you, but it isn’t you.” Well, she’s right. It’s not the version of myself I display to her. The version she sees is usually in leggings with a stray hole along the seam, wearing no makeup, in a rush to pack a peanut-free snack while practicing a Vietnamese language lesson in the background. Mom Me listens intently to a story about playground politics. She drives carefully and doesn’t complain when turning on JoJo Siwa for the hundredth time. She could never summon enough drama to become the protagonist in any story. That version, to my child, is the only version of me that matters. And at her young age, that makes sense. She’s not quite ready to see the me beyond her, much less the AI version of me. But in another life, couldn’t the AI version have been me? If I had made different choices—not gone to graduate school in Chicago, where I met her father; devoted my life to kung fu; been born into a military family predestined for greatness—could I have been a hero, not of my own story, but of all the stories? The AI hero filter is but a small glimpse of another offshoot in the multiverse where I am a different, bolder version of myself. The pull of an alternate self is intoxicating and bewildering. It’s the stuff of movies. In the film Everything Everywhere All at Once, a struggling, exhausted Evelyn Wang (played by my AI doppelgänger, Michelle Yeoh) learns to navigate the multiverse through verse-jumping technology. Her mission is to save the multiverse by defeating a chaotic, life-destroying being called Jobu Tupaki, who travels fluidly between worlds. To do so, Evelyn must temporarily inhabit the lives of the alternate Evelyns, acquiring their skills in order to reshape her reality. From an opera diva, she learns to reach the highest notes, discombobulating her enemies. From a kung fu fighter, she learns to slice the air with her powerful limbs. From a bizarre yet endearing multiverse where she has hotdogs for fingers, Evelyn learns compassion and vulnerability. Throughout the film, Evelyn asks several versions of “Why me?” Her guide, an alternate version of her husband Waymond, tells her that he thinks she’s special, that, truly, what makes her so exceptional is her complete ordinariness. It’s not stated explicitly, but the reason Evelyn is able to deftly appropriate so many skills is because she is a blank canvas, a sponge capable of soaking up all the many identities. Until, of course, she isn’t. Until the underlying promise of heroism—the tragic and inevitable martyrdom—catches up with her. And though our choices begin to define who we are—at least, the public version that we offer for consumption—all the choices we didn’t make don’t just disappear. They root inside of us like seeds that never quite have enough light to grow. I think this is where I’m supposed to give a pithy, optimistic summation of my mundane life. I’d espouse the virtues of a hardworking, unremarkable existence; of being a solid member of my community, even without heroic headlines; of being a parent who can tolerate an unprecedented amount of Kidz Bop. And I do believe in those virtues. I’m not certain there is an epic path that would feel more personally gratifying than the ordinary one I’m on. After all, the emotional crux of Everything Everywhere All at Once is the line where Evelyn says, “I will always, always, want to be here with you.” In that statement, Evelyn begins to at last embody the thing that all heroes start their journey with: agency. She has sampled the buffet of destiny, and she actively chooses the life she has. I like to think she still carries the other Evelyns with her too, stringing all the selves together until it’s all simply, beautifully, just her, a being recognized in her complicated and flawed entirety. I haven’t gotten to that place of exalted consciousness myself. For my part, I spend a few moments looking at Hero Me each day, partly because I’m writing this essay, and partly because I remain fascinated by the liminal space she inhabits: neither of this world, nor entirely fictional. But now, after thinking through Evelyn Wang’s journey, my initial thrill of recognition has morphed into something a little more complicated—an unexpected emptiness, sprinkled with some dread. Hero Me is beautiful, but she is soulless. In whatever metaverse she inhabits, she likely does not love the things I love or desire the things I desire. Hero Me, in that world, likely has a Hero Her. Who can say? The crux of her appeal is in her unknowability. But I don’t really want to be unknown. I, like so many of us, only want to be seen.
