Vintage 1980s film camera (representative image), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
Kiara Advani, Virat Kohli join viral 80s AI photo trend
A viral AI photo trend turning modern selfies into 1980s-style portraits has spread across Indian social media, with Piyush Goyal, Kiara Advani and Virat Kohli among those who joined in.
Kiara Advani and Virat Kohli are among the big names who have joined a viral AI photo trend turning modern selfies into 1980s-style portraits.
The trend works by uploading a recent photo to an AI tool, which preserves facial features while transforming clothing, hairstyle, lighting, background and colour grading to fit the 80s era.
Bollywood’s Sidharth Malhotra and cricketer KL Rahul have also shared their AI-generated retro portraits online.
Politicians including Union Minister Piyush Goyal, Kiren Rijiju and Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma joined the craze too, while Shashi Tharoor instead posted an actual 1980s photograph.
The trend spread through Instagram’s ‘Add Yours’ sticker and follows earlier viral AI image crazes this year, including Studio Ghibli-style portraits and action-figure avatars.
Users generate the images by uploading a recent photo and asking an AI tool to preserve their facial features while changing clothing, hairstyle, lighting, background and colour grading to match the 1980s.
The trend has spread across Instagram, TikTok and X, with users sharing their AI-generated retro portraits alongside captions reflecting on how much has changed since the decade.
Some commentators have raised questions about the privacy and data implications of uploading personal photos to AI image tools to generate these viral portraits.
Actors Kiara Advani and Sidharth Malhotra were among the Bollywood stars who joined the trend, sharing their AI-generated 1980s portraits on social media.
The trend was popularised on Instagram through the platform’s ‘Add Yours’ sticker, which lets users chain their own versions of a viral format onto a shared thread.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor notably opted out of using AI altogether, instead sharing an actual photograph of himself from the 1980s.
Cricketers Virat Kohli and KL Rahul were also among the public figures who shared AI-generated 80s-style portraits, adding to the trend’s reach among sports fans.
Vintage 1980s film camera (representative image), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0