The Anti-AI Aesthetic Taking Over Social Media

"San Diego-based Vanna Jimenez became a beauty influencer by accident. A year ago, she began posting her morning routines on TikTok and Instagram out of her tiny antique bathroom. While she initially focused on her love of 1960s fashion, her skincare and makeup - tossed artfully across a silver tray piled with her coffee, jewellery, toothpaste, books and accessories - quickly gained followers and the attention of beauty brands."

""The whole sink aesthetic is trending because it's relatable," said Jimenez. What looked like an improvised outtake tapped into a broader trend of influencers and brands embracing mess. Scroll through the social media feeds of nearly any cool-girl beauty brand, and you're more likely to encounter a cluttered sink shot than the once-popular carefully styled shelfies. The aesthetic shift comes amid not only fatigue with paid influencer content and "overconsumption," but anxiety around artificial intelligence as its ability to generate realistic images and product reviews"

"Marketers are noticing that audiences have become more skeptical: 81 percent of chief marketing officers surveyed by marketing agency Dentsu in 2025 believe their customers will pay more for human-created content, up from 65 percent in 2024. In a post earlier this month, Instagram head Adam Mosseri wrote that fake creator content "indistinguishable from captured media" would be a "key risk" for the platform in 2026, noting that "savvy creators are leaning into unproduced, unflattering images.""

San Diego-based Vanna Jimenez began posting morning routines from a tiny antique bathroom and gained attention after showcasing 1960s fashion alongside skincare and makeup arranged on a crowded silver tray. Brands including Chanel Beauty, Haus Labs and Shark responded by sending products, hoping to appear in such cluttered compositions. The sink aesthetic emphasizes relatability and messy authenticity over curated shelf displays. The shift reflects fatigue with paid influencer content, concerns about overconsumption, and anxiety about AI-generated visuals. Marketers report growing consumer preference for human-created content, and platform leaders warn that fake creator media indistinguishable from captured footage poses a major risk.

Read at The Business of Fashion