This year’s Wimbledon tennis tournament was action-packed as always – but in the wake of the event, the internet has been focusing on influencer Mia Zelu, whose courtside images went viral. The reason: because she doesn’t exist. Mia and her sister Ana are AI influencers with 169k followers and 267k followers on Instagram respectively. The two are svelte, glowy-skinned, wavy-haired perfection. And, as many a commentator has remarked, they’re part of a new cohort of AI influencers perpetuating an impossible, Eurocentric standard of beauty.
As if contoured, photoshopped, filtered, and curated influencer accounts weren’t setting the bar impossibly high already, women now get to compare themselves to AI-generated “perfection”.
“AI is shaping our world – and with it, our perceptions of beauty. As generative AI tools rapidly enter mainstream use, they carry with them a significant problem: their outputs reflect the biases inherent in the data on which they’re trained. Ask an AI to generate a ‘beautiful woman,’ and the result is often a filtered, Western-centric ideal. For women across the Global South – especially in Africa – that means being invisible in the digital age,” says Dominique Baxewanos, creative director at VML South Africa.
Dove South Africa, in partnership with its creative agency VML, has created a world-first tool to combat this epidemic of fakeness.
World-first Chrome extension combats AI bias
Last year VML and Dove South Africa created the Real Beauty Generation microsite. Using Adobe Firefly's beta API, the platform allowed users to generate images of women using prompts that included features like acne scarring, laugh lines and deep-set wrinkles – then rate them.
But the number of AI image generators is increasing all the time and people will use their platform of choice. So VML and Dove South Africa have taken it a step further, developing something that has never been done before: a plugin for Chrome that allows users to generate inclusive, perfectly imperfect images of women using any image generation platform. It’s accessible even to users who are not particularly tech savvy.
How it works
One of the biggest issues with AI image generation is that your picture is only as good as your prompt. Many users struggle to convert the image they have in their minds into words specific enough to prompt an AI effectively. Dove’s new Real Beauty Chrome extension takes care of that.
“We used the data we gathered from the microsite interactions to develop a free, open tool that anyone can use to generate inclusive imagery,” says Theo Ferreira, executive creative director at VML South Africa. “In essence, it works as a translator, translating complex AI prompts into an intuitive, user-friendly experience that integrates seamlessly into your preferred generative AI platform (e.g. ChatGPT, Firefly, DeepSeek, etc) through your Chrome browser.”
Once installed, the extension will automatically appear onscreen when you open an AI image generator website in your Chrome browser – look for the little Dove logo. To use it:
1/ Click the logo to open a text box.
2/ Type your prompt into the text box.
3/ Use the drop-down menus to add specific details – including ethnicity (choose from several nuanced options), age, and natural features (e.g. laughter lines, skin tags and albinism).
4/ Click to generate a fully written AI prompt, then copy and paste it into the prompt area of the image generator you’ve chosen to use. Be amazed as an inclusive, representative image comes to life before your eyes.
The craft behind the extension
Craft played a key role in developing this tool. The team translated descriptive language into technically robust prompts that guide AI systems to produce more representative results – all while keeping the user experience simple and accessible. It means you don’t need to be a tech whizz to produce inclusive images.
The team also consulted with body positivity and language experts to make sure the descriptions in the drop-down menus promote both confidence and accuracy.
Championing real beauty
“Dove has spent 20 years championing real beauty,” says Anele Nzimande-Maphanga, PR and influencer lead at Unilever South Africa. “Over those two decades, we’ve rallied against harmful stereotypes, celebrated different body shapes and sizes and even challenged the harmful self-talk that often gets internalised from an early age. We’d hoped that by now the world would have become more inclusive. Unfortunately, with the rise of generative AI, harmful stereotypes are becoming more prevalent than ever. This tool empowers users to re-write the narrative around what real beauty looks like.”
For VML, the tool is a combination of technology, creativity and simple humanity. “This isn’t about pushing the boundaries of AI realism; it’s about promoting self-worth,” says VML chief creative officer Fran Luckin. “We want people to use this tool to reflect the beauty they see in themselves, their friends and the women around them. We want them to see that real beauty isn’t about being flawless – it’s those perceived ‘flaws’ that make us beautiful. And when women see personal characteristics that are so often labelled as ‘imperfections’ reflected in GenAI images of beauty, we want them to feel beautiful.”
The Dove Real Beauty Chrome extension is available for free download in the Chrome store. Download it here.
