“Seeing AI images like this over and over again rewired my sense of normal,” Ner explained. “When I’d look at my real reflection, I’d see something that needed correction.”
At one pivotal moment, Ner began experimenting with AI images depicting herself as a fashion model, a directive set down by her company, which was pursuing users interested in fashion. “I caught myself thinking, ‘if only I looked like my AI version,'” she wrote. “I was obsessed with becoming skinnier, having a better body and perfect skin.”
She soon began losing sleep in order to generate more and more images, which she called “addictive,” because each image triggered a “small burst of dopamine.” Though Ner had been successfully treating her bipolar disorder prior to her foray into AI fashion modeling, this new obsession spun into a “manic bipolar episode,” which she says triggered an episode of psychosis.
“When I saw an AI-generated image of me on a flying horse, I started to believe I could actually fly,” Ner writes. “The voices told me to fly off my balcony, made me feel confident that I could survive. This grandiose delusion almost pushed me to actually jump.”
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