TikTok says this AI filter is ‘hilarious’. Not everyone is laughing

A leading mental health advocate has slammed the latest TikTok filter which encourages users to generate AI images of what they’d look like if they were a “chubby” version of themselves, exposing to ridicule body types that live outside the sample size.

Danni Rowlands, head of prevention at the Butterfly Foundation, says the AI filter reinforces old ideas about the ideal body shape and size, with potentially harmful mental health outcomes for users.

“This [trend] reaffirms and reinforces certain body and health ideals that skinny is preferred and that larger is not. This is a really strong internalised message that our society has generated throughout years of diet culture.”

TikTok has released a new filter which allows users to create “chubby” and “skinny” versions of themselves.Credit: iStock

Millions have used the filter, which originates from CapCut and is owned by the same company that is responsible for TikTok. The social media site refers to it as a “hilarious” tool to transform images of people to “chubby” versions of themselves. The filter also allows users to create “skinny” versions of images.

However, many users have slammed the filter as fat phobic and encouraging ridicule of anyone who falls outside size ideals.

With most of TikTok’s Australian user base sitting within the ages of 18 to 24 (52.7 per cent), mental health professionals say the “fat filter” trend is sending a particularly dangerous message to young Australians.

“For young people in particular, who are vulnerable because they’re trying to come to terms with their identity, they’re really connecting their worth to their weight and seeing a body shape or size that isn’t aligned to the ideal as being bad or not good enough,” says Rowlands.

“It’s a really dangerous message to internalise as it can drive extreme and dangerous behaviours as a result.”

Rowlands says this can include behaviours such as restrictive dieting, extreme training and exercise and overuse of supplements. It can also involve behaviours we can’t see, such as a critical internal dialogue, leading to further mental health issues and creating a narrative that is hard to challenge.

“We have such strong stereotypes around body size and shapes,” Rowlands says. “With social media trends reinforcing fat phobia, weight stigma and really attaching that thin ideal as being the most preferred, it can become really hard for us to challenge the ideals of body positivity.”

The idea that all bodies can be healthy falls on deaf ears, when the same message on multiple different platforms screams – particularly at young people – that being “fat” or “chubby” is not desired.

“In our world, the body becomes a trend. And we have returned to really pushing the thin ideal,” Rowlands says.

Despite improved messaging, advocacy and a rise in diverse size representation over the past few years, Rowlands says that the ideal of thinness never truly went away.

“It’s always been louder than any other message that we’ve had around body size,” she says. “The thin ideal, the muscular ideal, the lean ideal – they’ve always been the strongest voices and messages that have been pushed out through society.”

Research shows that 78 per cent of young people in Australia wished they were thinner or leaner, with 75 per cent saying they never take a break from social media when it negatively affects how they feel about their bodies.

Rowlands says parents have a role to play in how their children interact with social media.

“We need to be curious, ask our kids questions and really importantly, if you notice they’re spending a lot of time consuming social media content, they will be engaging with trends like this,” says Rowlands.

“So just be alert to behaviours they might start engaging in.”

She suggests using the app with your children and becoming familiar with their feed. Engaging with it yourself and sending them content that is completely unrelated to appearances can help jolt an unhealthy algorithm, Rowlands says.

It’s critical for adults to tune into how the content they consume makes them feel.

“If it’s triggering, or if it’s making you feel like you need to kind of engage in problematic behaviours, seek out the people in your relevant support networks and try to find content that aligns with your authentic self and the things that you love.”

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