to recognize Black faces. But acknowledging the problem is one thing — to make actual headway in fixing it is quite another.
Rhue’s theory is that there hasn’t been a big enough push for racial training for Big Tech to problem-solve. “Companies are very responsive to any AI bias. If you tell companies their bias, they can manage to fix it. The example I was talking about with [the cameras] was a huge problem, and they were able to fix it. So to me, it seems as though there isn't necessarily this push,” she says.
“I recall my experience as a Black Asian teen how a smaller nose and nonbrown eyes seemed like the answer to my problems, and now, as an adult, find selective parts of my face are now exaggerated, commodified, and normalized for the very audience who made me feel othered during my formative years,” Patterson tells NYLON. “There's even more irony when you consider these filters aren't primarily for the marginalized groups who already possess these features.
To her point, the beauty industry is no stranger to appropriating ethnic traits. There is the Kardashian effect. There is the fox-eye trend. Beauty, it seems, is only cognizant of nonwhite features when it fits a Eurocentric agenda, and tech has only rewarded the issue. If we apply the "life imitates art" philosophy, then AR filters are indeed parroting a systemic issue in who is, and isn’t, considered to be beautiful.
Unfortunately, there are no signs that point to an end of this augmentation craze, but an understanding of what both tech and trends mean and do is a start. “I don’t think beauty filters are going away any time soon, and that even if changes were to be implemented, we would have to rely on something out of our control,” says Kong. “What we can control, however, is ourselves.