I was in the middle of exchanging LinkedIn messages with a young woman who had pitched her company’s services to me when I got a weird feeling.
I wasn’t sure she was real.
Her headshot was polished. Good lighting. Clean background. But it almost looked too perfect. It was like a Stepford wife drifting into the uncanny valley. It felt off, almost like a scam. It felt so off-putting that I moved on without them. My reaction wasn’t analytical, it was instant and automatic.
When selecting your profile photo, it’s fine to ask if you like your headshot. You should. The more important question, however, is what impression is it making on the people who see it. Your headshot is not a decoration. It’s a signal.
So what is it signaling? Because people don’t study your photograph, they react to it. In my example above, the woman’s headshot was signaling inauthenticity.
The Low Effort Signal
Look, I’m a headshot photographer so I obviously have a very heavy bias in this situation. Years ago when I finally got a good headshot of myself it changed how I felt about myself. It closed my self-acceptance gap to a manageable level. Doing that for other people became highly addictive and I still love it like it’s brand new.
Having said that, an AI headshot signals low effort. It tells me that you are a low effort, path of the least resistance person. In a hiring or business context, people will rarely assume that’s the only place you cut corners. This isn’t the type of person I want to do business with or hire.
Headshots as First Impressions
Liking how you look in a photo is less important than determining if you look confident — like you are good at what you do. Do you look likable, like a person I would enjoy working with? Does the ratio of confidence to liability need to be weighted in favor of one or the other?
When I work with clients these are things that we deliberately craft to make the best first impression for them. With AI headshots people are typically only asking “does this resemble me closely enough, and do I like it?”
Authenticity and Self Respect
I sure hope you wouldn’t catfish somebody on a dating app. Why in the world would it be acceptable to do it in business? We all know that we tend to do business with people that we like and trust. How can I trust you if your digital handshake is fake?
Trust is fragile and first impressions either build it or erode it. If you’re not willing to show me your real face, it tells me something about your level of candor and confidence.
If you are a high-achieving person, somebody who works hard, is disciplined, and has achieved real personal growth, it seems like a crime against nature to dilute that into a computer-generated hallucination of what you really look like. I try to take good care of myself and to some extent my face reflects that. I love it when I can see it in my headshots.
Your face is a scoreboard of your habits. Why would you replace it with fiction?
The Value of Authentic Images
I find it hard to imagine someone feeling real pride in an AI generated image of themselves. That would be weird.
I love it when my clients look at themselves in their headshots and feel proud just as I did when I got that first good headshot of myself. If you think that a real photograph looks better than you typically look, congratulations — that’s the best version of yourself.
If you think that an AI headshot looks better than you typically look, you are presenting a version of yourself that isn’t real. I’d trade a dozen fake headshots for one real, good one because it is honest and intentional.
I understand that for some people who are tight on time and resources, fake pictures might be a good solution for certain situations, but for me and for the type of people I admire…it is bizarre. Unfortunately, some people are just not going to get it.
I have a friend who used to do network news. She is very smart and media-savvy. A few months ago on LinkedIn I saw that she had posted an AI photograph of herself. I texted her “catfisher.” She said “I know, but with a little bit of makeup and good lighting it’s not too far off.” I told her “if you really think that, you’re not catfishing me, you are catfishing yourself.”
Hopefully you think I wrote this myself.
Because if I didn’t, that would tell you something, too.
