Katie Piper has said artificial intelligence has set a dangerous new precedent in online bullying after social media trolls used AI technology to alter her appearance. The TV presenter, 42, was targeted after trolls used Grok, an AI tool exclusive to social media platform X, to repurpose a picture of her and “make her look beautiful.”
Attack and recovery
In 2008, Piper suffered life-altering third-degree burns to her face and was partially blinded following a sulphuric acid attack plotted by ex-boyfriend Daniel Lynch and carried out by his accomplice, Stefan Sylvestre. Her ongoing rehabilitation has included more than 400 operations and a trip to Germany for pioneering cosmetic treatment on her defective eye.
Speaking to the Mirror, Piper said: “I’d never faced anything like it before. It’s not new to have people on the internet discussing your appearance, particularly as women. But with AI, it’s changed the scale. A person saying, ‘She’s ugly’ would have been an opinion. But AI can now manufacture images to show how somebody ‘should look.’”
Concerns about AI and bullying
She added: “I wasn’t concerned about myself. I’m not easily offended. I’m quite a robust person. I know what my normal looks like for me, and I know it doesn’t look the same as everybody else. But it made me worry – what about somebody who’s not in that place, who’s not healed or isn’t as resilient?”
Piper believes the growing influence of AI across social media has added a worrying new dimension to faceless online bullying. She said: “I’m a fan of AI – I use it. But what this does to this kind of appearance-based bullying is it starts to feel objective now, instead of an opinion. People say, ‘Well, AI is neutral,’ and you’re like, ‘Well, actually, AI is learning from somewhere,’ right? AI didn’t invent those standards. AI is fed by a human. So, if society has biases around stars, disability, race, ageing, then AI can end up reflecting that, reinforcing that bias.”
Charity and app work
Piper launched The Katie Piper Foundation in 2009 to raise awareness of the difficulties faced by burns survivors and provide a clinically-led rehabilitation pathway for victims and their families. She was awarded the OBE for services to charity in 2022.
Piper has also used AI to develop her new period tracking app, Piper Period, available on Apple and Google Play Review. She said she was inspired to develop the app after her eldest daughter Belle, 12, had her first period: “Her dad is a really present father, and having conversations at home, talking to her about what was available, we realised there wasn’t as much as I would like – that conversations around periods were still being whispered rather than talked about openly, and didn’t include men.”
Loose Women role
Piper remains a rotating panellist on Loose Women, which has recently seen departures including Nadia Sawalha and Denise Welch. Speaking about Welch, Piper said: “She said she’s left before and then came back again. Hopefully she does come back again! But sometimes people leave to go and do other projects. And they might come back as a guest and tell us about what they’ve been up to. I love Denise. She’s a great girl, and everything you see is exactly what she’s like behind-the-scenes.”
Piper praised the show for valuing women ageing: “One of the reasons I feel so proud to be part of it is it’s one of the few, if only, shows that values women ageing and values their life stories, their wisdom, their experience. It almost relies on having older women because it shows you how much they bring to the table. I mean, the oldest panellist is in their eighties. And then it has younger women as well, in their twenties. I love the breadth of the ages. I love that it’s not scripted. It’s one space where we’re not arguing, we’re not falling out, we’re not being pitted against each other. We’re having different opinions, which actually, in a male space, is just called a debate.”
