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A body positive influencer who has spent years embracing her cellulite and stretch marks aired her concerns over the rise of "terrifying" AI models.
Danae Mercer Ricci, 36, from the US, became one of the pivotal faces behind the self-love movement after she started to post her unedited body on social media some time ago. Since then, the mum-of-one has built up a huge fanbase of 2.2million Instagram followers and another 280,000 on TikTok.
Despite Italy-based Danae helping not only herself, but other women across the globe embrace every single part of their bodies, the influencer and journalist is concerned about a new trend that is gaining popularity on social media.
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After dedicating much of her time debunking filtered and edited photos, Danae has now put AI models on blast due to the potential damaging effects the 'trend' could have on women and young girls.
Speaking exclusively to Daily Star about AI influencers and models, Danae – who recently labelled the existence of AI models "terrifying" – expressed: "I think we’re just at the tip of the iceberg now. I think they’re going to be very big and it will be increasingly difficult to separate that line between what is real and what is fake.
"Already, this is from someone who knows AI models exist, there’s an account that popped up on my page the other day and I clicked on it and I was like ‘I cannot tell if this girl is real or if she’s fake’ and she linked to an adult site.
"Everything was super edited but it just had that kind of uncanny valley feel, of either, she’s super super filtering everything or she’s an AI model.
"The thing is, technology is going to get better and better so it’s going to become increasingly impossible to tell what’s real and what’s fake. And, it’s not just the videos, there are voice technologies, Chat GPT.
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Danae predicted: "This is developing so rapidly that in the next year we’re going to see this technology become so much more widely available. I think there’s going to be an explosion of these fake and not real people on the internet.
"A lot of them are going to have all the things that traditionally make a really successful account, like a super beautiful woman – and you can make her life as dramatic as you want as she’s not real.
"Then, make her interact with her friends who are super super beautiful people but also not real. It’s insane, but it’s happening."
Danae is one of the defining faces of the self-love movement and often 'toxic' beauty trends to account. And she believes AI is just another factor that is putting pressure on women to 'achieve' an unrealistic beauty standard.
While Danae does not see the body positive movement at risk of becoming "obsolete", the hyper-realistic AI models and the current 'popularity' of thinness once paraded in the 90s and early 2000s is a concoction that could push back the progress of body acceptance that has gained traction over the last 10 years.
"Honestly, I think so," Danae responded when asked if AI models perpetuating idealistic images of women will be harmful to the body positive movement.
"I think combined with this trend at the moment with pushing back towards the 90s obsession with ultra thinness – which is a thing at the moment – combined with the rise of medicines that have allowed celebrities to drop a lot of pounds very quickly, there’s a growing pressure again to be ultra thin because bodies go through cycles.
"So on one hand with have that, on the other hand we have technology that’s increasingly intelligent creating hyper-beautiful fake women – that’s a huge amount of pressure."
As an example, Danae shared: "Look at the teenagers on TikTok, I mean a lot of the accounts that go viral it will be a beautiful teenage girl with an insanely small waist and curves. Some of them, not all, but some of them have definitely been edited, but edited in a very intelligent way.
"The girls know where to put their arms so that it doesn’t show, it doesn’t glitch. And those filters are getting smarter. So I can’t imagine what it would be like to be a girl at this moment.
"You’re flipping through and these girls deny head over heels that they’ve edited anything or retouched anything.
"So you’re a teenager looking at this thinking ‘this girl is saying it’s real so you start to wonder maybe she is real, maybe my body is the problem, maybe every other body looks like that, what’s wrong with me, this is what boys want’…
"What a mess, what a mess for body positivity, what a mess for grown women, what a mess for children."
Although there is some hope and light at the end of this dark, complex and reality-bending tunnel of the rise of the unregulated use of AI on social media.
Despite having concerns of the "mess" AI and the rapid increase of technological advancement can have for impressionable women and girls, Danae is not quitting her body positive content any time soon.
The mum is eager to still be a positive image not only for women and teenagers now, but the girls of the future including her 10-month old baby daughter, Aurora.
"I think just keep yourself really informed because this technology isn't going to go away," Danae shared her advice about spotting what is real and what is fake on social media, especially in regards to AI. "It's just getting smarter and it's going to become more prominent. So keep yourself really informed and start to question everything.
"We have to be really really aware that this is happening just cautious, not cynical, but sceptical and cautious.
"I think what gives me hope is that the teenagers and the younger generations, they're really smart and they're savvy and I think they're cautious, right? And they're cheeky and they're clever.
"It's my hope that seeing all of these voices they will be able to take away from the body positive movement and realise ‘ok now, I might not look like her but that's ok who cares I can still rock this low rise jean’ – which is a lot of them do that.
"In my generation I think there's this idea that if you didn't have a perfect flat washboard abs stomach you couldn't wear low rise jeans. I think this younger generation, they're like, 'I don't care I'm gonna wear it anyways.' And that's what gives me hope. I think that's a beautiful thing and that's the way it should be."
You can find Danae on Instagram here and TikTok here.
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