The Guardian – Women Are Paying for AI Face Scans That Prescribe Procedures

Tier 2: Professional organization or credentialed expert guidance
Publisher: The Guardian · Published: August 5, 2026 · Accessed: August 11, 2026

Claims this source supports

Qoves charges $150 for nonsurgical facial-analysis recommendations and $180 more for surgical recommendations; a 30-page report was priced at $330 for one customer; the service has more than 1 million YouTube subscribers.
Epica and Facemaxify are cheaper AI tools that score facial components against an opaque metric of 'facial harmony'; Epica specializes in skin and makeup plans for women and directs users to affiliate links for cosmetics; both services layer on paid subscriptions.
A Guardian reporter received a 61% 'skin health' score from Epica, retook the selfie in different lighting, and scored 81% – nothing changed but the lighting.
Dr. Justin Mogilski (co-author of the 2018 Frontiers in Psychology bulletin the apps reference) and Dr. Mitch Brown both told the Guardian the science is not clear enough to justify facial enhancement recommendations.
Dr. Tracy Vaillancourt called the services 'so destructive' to people with body dysmorphia, dysphoria, eating-disorder history, or low self-esteem, and called the body-dysmorphia self-certification checkbox 'the appearance of due diligence.'
Epica refused to disclose its algorithmic methodology; Qoves did not respond to a request for comment.