I wanted to see what would happen if I asked AI to create a selfie of who I am rather than just what I look like. Not a polished version, not just a face, but something abstract showing aspects of compassion, imagination, and personality. So I opened ChatGPT and started experimenting.
My first prompt was simple. I gave ChatGPT my physical features (early twenties, brown hair, brown eyes, rounder face, Slavic features) as well as asking for “fantasy or mythological elements.” I also asked it to try to make something more abstract using words like compassion, hopefulness, and imagination. The result was beautiful, don’t get me wrong. There was cinematic lighting, and a soft expression. It was definitely me, but like, slightly too perfect. But instead of following truly abstract elements, it tied in more symbolic details.
I pushed it a little further.
I asked AI to make it “more abstract” and “less perfect.” The next image that was generated was dreamy, painterly, and almost celestial. It was more stylized.
Finally I asked it one more time: “Add more personality. Give her a story.” The output gave me two options to choose from. Both more intimate, slightly messier, and with creative elements like sketchbooks in the one image and an open sea in the other. The imperfection, however, felt curated. Like Pinterest in real life. Even when I asked for flaws, everything was intentional, aesthetically pleasing, and controlled.
Then it clicked.
The more I asked for depth, the more the AI gave me style instead of substance.
I was expecting something with more complexity. Maybe messier. Maybe even contradictory. What I got though, was coherence. Every single time.
Instead of traits that represented things like compassion or imagination, the AI translated those aspects into visual shortcuts: soft lighting represented kindness, flowers or nature represented gentleness, glowing or fantasy elements represented imagination.
These traits weren’t understood, they were aesthetics.
This is where things get interesting. It’s not just a technical limitation. It says something about how identity works online.
These images looked like me. They didn’t feel like me. They were versions of me filtered through what AI thinks identity should look like: beautiful, readable, emotionally clear. A polished, idealized version of a person.
In real life, identity is never clean. It’s context dependent and inconsistent. Confusing. AI doesn’t really understand how to show that. Images are instead built through patterns that already exist online. Instead of representing me, the images represented what I should look like.
This raises uncomfortable questions.
If AI tools are shaping how we represent ourselves, what kinds of identities are they encouraging? What gets left out?
The images leaned toward softness, beauty, and emotional clarity. Although, they were not neutral, reflecting cultural expectations around femininity. There’s also something strange about how these images are easily created and shared. I could easily, with just a few prompts, generate different versions of “myself” that I feel I could post.
This makes me feel like my identity is replicable but still detached from lived experiences.
Writing about this as a blog post instead of an academic paper actually changed how I thought about it. My essay was structured with sources, theory, and formal language. Here, I feel like I am telling a story.
That shift matters as it shapes how the message comes across.
Like we saw in class: medium changes the meaning.
In a blog, I can show the process, the frustrations, and the small realizations. It’s less about proving an argument, but more about walking someone through it.
AI didn’t fail to represent me. Instead it just represented the version of me that fits within its system. Coherent. Aesthetic. Easy to understand.
But I think that’s the point. These images aren’t selfies, they are performances. Not of who I am, but what identity looks like when it’s shaped by algorithms.
The more I tried to make it abstract, the more I realized that AI doesn’t struggle with abstraction, it just replaces it with what is considered beauty online.
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