‘Hot Girls’ Are Using AI to Add Animals to Their Photos

‘Hot girls’ of Instagram have begun a new trend which sees them using AI to add fake animals into their fashion photos.

The eyebrow-raising fad was first flagged by Jamey Gannon (@techbimbo), who shared a series of images showing influencers holding cockapoos, surrounded by bunny rabbits, or even posing with a horse in a hallway.

Fashion and beauty influencers Juliet Kaz, Gaia Cormío, Maria Heredia, and Daria Ramos have all recently shared photos of themselves surrounding by AI-generated animals. Some disclose that the animals have been summoned from an app like Google Gemini or Midjourney; others haven’t acknwoledged the technology.

Gannon’s post on X has been viewed 26.5 million times as of writing, and many of the comments are negative. “Instagram face and a thigh gap is not enough to stop the scroll anymore,” writes Alex.

Gannon says that she “barely sees any comments asking” whether the photos are AI and the influencers “aren’t making it known immediately.” It now seems the hot girls are increasingly disclosing the use of AI after Gannon drew attention to the matter.

What AI Are the ‘Hot Girls’ Using?

The images are being generated using Google’s Nano Banana model, which can be found on the Google Gemini App, Google AI Studio, and even on Adobe Photoshop.

Once located, users simply upload a photo of themselves and type in a prompt like ‘surround this man with meerkats,’ or whichever animal the user desires.

Google is marketing Nano Banana as a powerful, natural-language photo editor. As well as adding animals that don’t exist, users can upload a photo of themselves and then get the app to change their expression. It can also make more rudimentary edits.

But not everyone is using Nano Banana for good: last month police on both sides of the Atlantic issued warnings over the ‘AI homeless man’ trend, which saw people uploading photos of their homes and AI-generating a stranger inside. They would then send the image to an unsuspecting parent or partner who would freak out and call the police over it.