It’s easy to identify a photo from the early days of Instagram and Snapchat. Grainy, greenish sunset photos and dog-eared selfies littered social media during the mid-2010s. Augmented-reality filters went viral for their ability to shrink noses and brighten complexions. They weren’t fooling anyone, but they weren’t supposed to.
Fast-forward nearly a decade, and filters have significantly stepped up their game. Unlike the flower-crown filters of old, which superimposed a mesh face on your on-screen selfie using facial-tracking technology, the latest filters digest the image’s pixels to spit out an entirely new face. Today’s online world is awash with images of poreless skin, perfectly arched brows, and…
