She had spent three hours getting ready for the party, only to disappear the second Suruchi walked in wearing that green halter-neck. When Riya’s curls bounced under the fairy lights, every phone in the room tilted toward her. And on the dance floor, it was Sandhya who was grabbing all eyeballs with her moves.
What made these even worse was the fact that Rohan was all eyes for all of three of these girls at different moments during the course of the evening. And he took notice of everyone except for Aditi. She now began to feel that her own attire, which by the way was fairly nice and cost a lot more than she'd have liked, looked pedestrian next to everyone else's "designer".
She tossed her clutch on the bed and opened her phone. The WhatsApp group was flooded with photographs clicked at the party. The dozen-odd from the multitude in which she featured stared back at her with cruel reminders of how she stuck out like a sore thumb. She felt her hair looked frizzy, her smile too tight, and her dress not quite right. Jealousy gnawed at her.
That's when she remembered the AI design app she had downloaded a few days ago. PicPerfect, with the tagline "Be your best you" was taking the world by storm.
She uploaded one of the many selfies she had clicked of herself before leaving home for the party.
"That's a wonderful photograph, but I can make it look drop-dead gorgeous. Would you like me to enhance this?" the app asked in a tone she felt was very sweet and nice.
"Yes", she clicked the button without thinking too much.
First, it smoothed her skin and added a glow that looked suspiciously like moonlight.
"You're looking amazing", the dialog box under the newly generated image flashed. "Would you like me to open your eyes a wee bit?"
"Yes", she clicked the button again, unable to contain her curiousity.
A new enhanced image pops up on screen with an "Eyes opened 15%" comment in the dialog box. "Would you like to try changing the colour of your eyes."
"Oh my God! Yes! Yes! Yes!" she shrieked excitedly, before spam-punching the button on the screen.
An extensive palette popped up on screen with a small inset box offering a close-up preview of the photograph being processed. She played around with these for a good 20-25 minutes before eventually saving one option with grey eyes.
"Wow!", the dialog box flashed this time, "Absolutely gorgeous. Would you like to further enhance your photograph before sharing this on your socials?"
That was an offer too tempting to resist, and Aditi hurriedly agreed to fully lower herself down that rabbit hole. By the time she finally emerged almost two hours later, she had added well shaped eyebrows, a sharper jawline, fluffier and colourful hair, fuller lips, and a wide array of shapes to the mix. Without a shadow of doubt, the photograph on display was flawless, radiant, magazine‑worthy.
When she uploaded the image on her Insta around 3 AM, she crossed 100 likes and comments within 20 minutes.
A dozen more guys than the usual count slid into her DMs. But Rohan's "You look very different, but amazing! How come I didn't find you at the party?" was what made her day.
The app had replaced her piece-by-piece, pixel-by-pixel, until nothing original remained.
But that didn't matter. At least not tonight!
This post is a part of the BlogchatterA2Z Challenge 2026
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