That is the question taking over Instagram, TikTok and other social media platforms this week. Thousands of users are using artificial intelligence tools to transform their current photos into portraits that look as though they came straight out of a family album from four decades ago.
The process is simple: users upload a photo and ask an AI tool to preserve their facial features while transforming their appearance, clothing, hairstyle, makeup, setting and photographic style to recreate the aesthetics of the 1980s. The results feature voluminous hair, shoulder pads, bold colors, denim, oversized accessories, direct flash and the texture of analog photography.
The trend began spreading across social media over the past few days and quickly moved from everyday users to public figures. On Instagram, the “Chat, what would I look like in the 1980s?” sticker and the “Add Yours” feature are helping turn individual images into chains of participation.
This once again demonstrates a pattern already seen in other AI-driven trends: participation increases when a tool allows users to see themselves as part of the phenomenon.
Brands can also tap into this trend as a tool for user-generated content, engagement and personalized storytelling.
A fashion brand, for example, could transform its customers into models for an ’80s-inspired campaign. A beauty brand could recreate archival looks. A beverage brand could turn contemporary photos into retro advertisements. Even a brand founded after the 1980s could imagine what its identity might have looked like if it had existed during that decade.
What is perhaps most surprising about the trend is that many? No, many of the people taking part probably never experienced the 1980s themselves.
This reminds us that AI allows us to experience a form of constructed nostalgia: not remembering a moment from our own past, but imagining what it might have been like to be part of it.