Viral AI filter slammed for promoting fatphobia, body-shaming

• A viral AI filter on TikTok, altering users’ appearances to look ‘chubby’ or ‘skinny’, has been criticised for being fatphobic and body-shaming.
• Eating disorder clinician Emma Thomas says the filter has distressed young clients, reinforcing fears about weight gain.
• CapCut, the app connected to TikTok, pulled the filter, but experts warn the damage may already be done.

By Jogai Bhatt of RNZ

A troubling trend has been doing the rounds - a viral AI filter that alters users’ appearance to make them look either ‘chubby’ or ‘skinny’.

It mostly features slim, young women using the filter to make themselves look bigger, often as a joke with mocking captions. Meanwhile, the ‘skinny filter’ is used as so-called motivation to hit the gym or eat healthier.

Many TikTok users called out the trend for being fatphobic, body-shaming, and potentially encouraging of eating disorders, and CapCut - the editing app connected to TikTok - officially pulled the filter. But some health experts suggest the damage may already be done.

Emma Thomas, an eating disorder clinician specialising in binge-eating disorders, says almost all of her younger clients have mentioned seeing the ‘chubby filter’ online.

“They’ve mentioned that their last week has been particularly distressing or that they’ve taken some steps back in their recovery due to this filter because it’s just reinforced all of their fears about weight gain. So I looked it up myself and it’s pretty horrific.

“It’s being used to laugh at and mock fatness, people are talking about it being used as motivation to scare themselves into eating less.”

Despite progress in celebrating body diversity, fatphobia and racism have regained momentum over the past year, especially on social media where people can easily comment on each other's appearances. Photo / 123RF

Thomas says the filter reinforces some harmful societal ideas about bigger bodies.

“We know making fun of oppressed groups is not okay, but fatness is like the last frontier in terms of socially acceptable prejudices. [The filter] is incredibly harmful, not just to fat people who are once again the butt of the joke, but to society as a whole.

“It makes fatness something to fear and be humiliated by and it affects everyone’s body image because it keeps all those fears about weight gain alive, and therefore our obsession with monitoring our own body size alive. It continues to posit being fat as the worst possible thing there could be.”

The advent of a ‘chubby filter’ in 2025 is a far cry from the body positivity movement that preceded it just a decade ago.

Cast your mind back to 2015 and you’ll remember a movement of celebrities embracing their bodies, health and thinness finally being unlinked, and even advertising starting to feature a diversity of sizes in fashion and modelling.

In just the last few years, a lot of that progress seems to have been undone. Now, Ozempic runs rampant in Hollywood, Kardashians are slowly removing their implants, low-rise jeans are back in fashion, and people are more comfortable than ever criticising each other from behind a screen.

Ozempic has recently gained attention for its use in weight loss and the treatment of binge eating. Photo / 123rf

AUT senior media studies lecturer Pansy Duncan has noticed a rise in fatphobic commentary online, particularly within right-wing circles.

“There was a period where people were actively embracing bigger bodies and pushing back against equations of thinness and health and fatness and disease, which is kind of an ingrained equation ... now it seems that people are increasingly confident about saying fat people are just unhealthy, I’ve noticed especially on X, lots of people kind of have that particular axe to grind."

Duncan says thinness has never gone out of fashion, as far as dominant body ideals go. But the “explicit and reflexive pushback against body positivity” feels new.

“Pushing back against the increasing visibility of bigger women ... it’s such a prominent and important culture wars issue for them, that these women disappear again. That didn’t seem like that was on people’s mind as much until recently.”

Thomas says she has observed something similar.

“What’s happening in America, where it’s now legally and socially acceptable to marginalise oppressed groups ... I would say that certain people are becoming more open with being disparaging about fat bodies because people like Trump have made it more socially acceptable to be racist, for example.

“People just think they can get away with this stuff now ... and my clients have noticed all of these things.”

Lizzo, who became popular for confidently embracing her curvier figure, has also lost weight after years in the public eye. Photo / Getty Images

Celebrities like Lizzo, Adele, and Oprah - seen as visions of diverse body representation - have notably slimmed down in recent years and been praised for it. Thomas has seen it happen, but says she can’t blame them.

“It’s not their individual fault, but it shows the power of pressure, especially on women, to be thin. Suddenly with great privilege and access to resources, there’s a tool to actually be thin, so people are jumping at it.

“Suddenly all this work that people were doing around [fat acceptance], it’s like wait a minute, we’ve got a way to be thin quickly. And you can’t fault people for jumping on that because even though there was a body positivity movement coming up, it’s still incredibly hard to be fat. Life is objectively harder in a fat body because we make fat people feel so terrible.

“It makes sense people are jumping on the Ozempic bandwagon, but I do think it’s been a back step for the body positivity movement.”

While the filter’s original intent is unclear, Duncan says TikTok should have better anticipated how it would be used - or misused.

“There’s something stark about the ‘before’ and ‘after’ format of the filter which invites a sort of tool for comedy in people’s horrified encounters with bigger versions of themselves. It’s not a very pleasant way of talking about people in bigger bodies.

“I think when you’re putting a device like this on a platform, you have to kind of think about the worst possible ways that people are going to use a filter like this, and bear with the fact that’s probably how people will use it. That’s just what people do on social media, they think up the worst possible implications for things and run with it.”

While the filter has been banned, Thomas says it could still have far-reaching ramifications for how young people on the app see themselves.

“It’s such a sensitive time for young people, before they’ve really developed their self-worth ... it’s creating a worse environment for young women that are in larger bodies, it’s reinforcing stigmas and making it more socially acceptable to openly mock and fear people’s body size.

“Fat people are not a comedic TikTok filter, they’re not your ‘before’ image before going on a diet and they’re not your ‘hilarious’ after image. I know the filter is banned now so at least there is an acknowledgement that it’s not okay but some damage has been done for sure.”

Megan Tombs, the chairwoman of Eating Disorder Association of New Zealand, says while the filter could contribute body image issues, it could never be directly responsible for causing eating disorders.

“The filter could create an environment where an eating disorder can occur ... I’m loathe to say social media, in any case, causes an eating disorder because it cannot, but it could contribute to the perfect storm for anyone.

“It’s important to remember an eating disorder doesn’t discern ... men, boys, any gender, race, ethnicity, any socio-economic level, an eating disorder can thrive in. But recovery is a hundred per cent possible, it can be overcome at any age, any stage, any time.”