AI creates the 'perfect' man and woman in new images

The AI images were created using engagement analytics from social media with the tools looking at billions of images of people online.

The findings were released by an eating disorder awareness group that monitors and educates on issues around mental health-linked eating disorders.

The Bulimia Project said the findings showed that the depicted body types are "largely unrealistic", adding that images tend to be biased towards certain characteristics.

(The Bulimia Project) AI images tended to depict the 'perfect' man with darker hair and the 'perfect' women with blonde hair (Image: The Bulimia Project)

The group said that the image of women tend to lean towards blonde hair, brown eyes and olive skin with men seeing a bias towards brown hair, brown eyes and olive skin also.

The Bulimia Project added that social-media-inspired AI images tended to be "far more sexually charged".

37% of the images of women featured blonde hair while 53% had olive skin.

The "perfect" man was featured with muscles and a six-pack with 67% of these images including brown hair and 63% featuring olive skin.

These images were created using AI software like Dall-E 2, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney.

(Canva) AI was used to create the 'perfect' man and woman (Image: Canva)

Social media platforms accused of promoting 'unrealistic body types' by eating disorder group

The Bulimia Project said of the findings: "Considering that social media uses algorithms based on which content gets the most lingering eyes, it's easy to guess why AI's renderings would come out more sexualised.

"But we can only assume that the reason AI came up with so many oddly shaped versions of the physiques it found on social media is that these platforms promote unrealistic body types, to begin with."