AI-generated, hyperrealistic beauty filters are often used on platforms like TikTok — or right here on Instagram — to smooth, change or enhance features, but at what cost? In her TED Talk, journalist and host of the TED Talks Daily podcast Elise Hu explores how online filters like these are reshaping how we see beauty offline and physically reshaping our bodies. So what can we do? “Filters aren’t going anywhere — but we can challenge what the system is optimized for by changing what it means to be beautiful,” she says. “And ultimately, we have to disrupt a system that reduces our worthiness to our looks.”