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By Marni Rose McFall
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Social media has long housed fitness transformation videos, where people share before-and-after pictures after a workout, videos showing what they eat in a day, and weight-loss journeys.
But if you’ve been online recently, you might have noticed that these videos look slightly different. The transformations are shocking, and someone may look like an entirely different person at the end of a video than at the beginning. While fitness transformation videos have long promised a "new me," these videos take things a step further, and the results look simply unreal.
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And that’s because they’re not real.
AI-generated fitness transformation videos have started to emerge on social media, often garnering millions of views online. This content is emerging as many experts have raised concerns about how the ultra-thin body standard is becoming prolific amidst the rise of Ozempic and the rebirth of "thinspiration" content.
As social media users grapple with the way AI is altering the fabric of society, and concerns about deepfake imagery rise, AI-generated fitness videos may risk the promotion of a literally unreal body image, as unrealistic body standards are already rising.
Newsweek spoke to experts about the rise of these videos and the potential harms they pose.
The Rise In AI-Generated Fitness Transformations
A quick search on social media for terms like ‘AI fitness video’ will throw up a multitude of results. Many of these videos are clearly AI. They feature cartoon characters working out, and can be played for laughs with grandmothers lifting weights, a heavyweight champion, or a cat decked out in a headband aggressively skipping.
Other content isn’t as clear. Many genuine fitness creators have called out this content online, in videos that have quickly gone viral. The online personal trainer Louis Baker-Stroud shared a reaction to a fitness video that had the text overlay, “POV: You stopped using 'bad genetics' as an excuse,” where he called the video out for being AI. That video has been viewed over 2 million times as of reporting.
So why is this content proliferating so quickly?
Dr. Rachel Hogg, a senior lecturer in psychology at Charles Sturt University in Australia, told Newsweek over email, “'Body transformation’ content has always resulted in high online engagement, which benefits social media platforms and content creators alike.”
But beyond this, “Put simply, the tech industry is not adequately regulated.”
For Jennifer Mills, a professor and psychologist at York University, Toronto, the reasoning was slightly different. “People are naturally drawn to attractive people, and seeing exaggerated and idealized bodies quickly and effectively grabs our visual attention. For people who are dissatisfied with their weight or shape, or musculature, they want to know next, how do I achieve that?”
Mills said that the fact that these videos are AI-generated doesn’t necessarily register. What does, though, is the appeal of the imagery and a quick emotional response.
The beginning of a new year often sees a proliferation of content that ranges from wellness to weight loss, be it promises of a "new year, new me," or pledges to stick to a grueling fitness regime.
This spike of interest around the new year could be a contributing factor, according to Mills. “During New Year's resolution season, there are lots of people who would be interested in and clicking on weight loss and body transformation advice,” she said.
“The more interest people show in social media content, the faster it will circulate. If you search or like any type of weight loss or body transformation content, your feed will fill up very quickly,” Mills added.
What Are the Potential Harms of this Content?
As this content proliferates, so too do concerns about its potential harms. The connection between disordered eating and social media is already well documented: a 2025 report from SQ magazine stated that 80 percent of eating disorder patients say social media contributed to the development or worsening of their condition.
Meanwhile, one in three adolescents said they had engaged in disordered eating behaviors due to social media content, and 65 percent of teens who use social media reported experiencing negative feelings about their body image.
Rachel Rodgers, an associate professor of Counselling Psychology at Northeastern University, told Newsweek in a phone call, “We don't yet have many data on the ways in which synthetically generated images influence people's body image and the way to which that is modulated by people that understanding that these are generated images rather than humans.”
However, Rodgers said this content could be “extremely harmful.”
“The capacity to generate images that look like something, even more unrealistic than a Photoshopped or digitally modified human, is large. And I suspect that the cognitive processes that are involved in people knowing this is not a human will not buffer against the effects of body image,” Rodgers said.
Meanwhile, Hogg told Newsweek, “Body image ideals have never been static, but AI has the potential to accelerate the speed with which we culturally cycle from one beauty standard to the next, which in turn has the potential to heighten the striving and uncertainty women experience around how their bodies should look.”
Hogg pointed to the shift in beauty standards over the last fifteen years, noting that following the dominance of the thin beauty ideal, the standard shifted to the “skinny thicc” physique, which she described as being characterized by “a small waist, curvy hips, ample breasts, and large behinds.”
Now, post-pandemic, the ideal has shifted back to thinness. These changes are significant in the context of AI. “AI will allow content creators to simply manufacture body changes of all forms on a whim,” Hogg said.
She noted that while this could be protective for the creators themselves – “actual surgical intervention and physical starvation will be rendered unnecessary,” it will become a burden for the audience. “Even the most sophisticated social media user will struggle to identify AI-generated content, unless there is proper regulation of this from the tech industry, while disordered beauty standards may intensify and change more quickly than ever before.”
Newsweek also spoke with Emily Hemendinger, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado Anschutz, who put the potential harms simply**: “**These types of videos are just going to reinforce and maintain the already messed-up relationship many people have with their bodies and appearance.”
“Overall, with these types of videos, on top of the GLP-1 craze and SkinnyTok, we are looking at increased preoccupation around weight and appearance, disordered eating, eating disorders, comparisons, depression, and anxiety. All of which leads to more disconnection and isolation, which reinforces many peoples’ needs to change their appearance.”
“It’s a reinforcing cycle,” Hemendinger said.
How To Navigate This Content in Online Spaces
It’s clear that this content could pose real harm online. So, what do social media users need to know about navigating this content online?
Hemendinger told Newsweek, “This content can be extremely convincing, and I only see it becoming more and more realistic.”
Newsweek also spoke with Megan A. Vendemia, assistant professor in the Department of Communication Studies at West Virginia University. She highlighted the importance of media literacy to “combat risks associated with this content,” describing them as “essential.”
“As AI content generators continue to become more sophisticated, it will be increasingly difficult to detect what is 'real' from what is not,” she said. “Instead, social media users should be aware that these videos exist and maintain a healthy level of scepticism.”
But Vendemia highlighted that a greater shift is needed. “There needs to be an enduring societal shift in body ideals and greater collective efforts to promote authenticity online.”
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