Your ’80s style AI photo is temporary: What happens to images you upload?

4 min readUpdated: Sep 16, 2026 12:55 PM IST

The ’80s AI photo trend is taking social media by storm, with users transforming modern photos into retro-style portraits. (Image: Instagram/rukmini_vasanth_fans.club)

Nostalgia seems to be inundating social media lately. The ’80s-style AI photos is a trend that is fast catching on, but this is not a new phenomenon; remember ‘Ghiblify’? These trends ask users to take the help of artificial intelligence (AI) tools to transform their images into the trending style. A younger version of yourself perched stylishly on a cherry-red Contessa is certainly an alluring thought.

It only takes a few seconds to transform your image, and it is fun, and millions are already doing it. But there is a brewing concern that many seem to overlook. A recent report in Wired sheds light on the perils of impulsively uploading images to AI chatbots.

It is not just a photo.

For many users, it may just be a picture from an album on their phones, along with hundreds of others. In simple words, when you upload a selfie to ChatGPT, Gemini or any other AI app, you are offering more than a picture. It is data. Photos carry hidden metadata, which is essential information like when it was taken, what device was used, and the location. Since a face is a unique attribute, the image counts as personal data the moment it identifies who the user is.

In the report, cybersecurity expert Christina Popper of NYU Abu Dhabi revealed that AI systems collect multiple layers of information all at once. These are essentially what you type and upload and what the system infers about the user from it: background details about sessions like IP address and device type, and responses or files that get stored afterwards. So, in simple words, when you upload an image for a trend, you are giving a lot more data.

Story continues below this ad

What can you do?

AI chatbots aren’t necessarily more dangerous than other apps used every day; they are simply not private.

• artificial intelligence