Can AI Tell You Everything Wrong With Your Face? I Paid to Find Out

Am I ugly?

That was once a question to ponder while laying awake at night, on the peripheries of a school dance, or hugging the wall in a crowded bar. But the last few decades have been boom times for aesthetic self-criticism. Today you can ask yourself if you’re ugly while zooming into the pores on your face, watching yourself speak in a video call, or filtering and editing yourself into someone else. But what if you really want to know for sure? Qoves will tell you. For $150, the British start-up will analyze your face with an AI-powered tool to determine how attractive you are across 160 features.

Qoves was founded by Shafee Hassan, an Australian engineer, as a passion project. “I’ve always been interested in what makes a face attractive, so I built neural models in 2021 to better understand the relationship between anthropometry and beauty,” says Hassan, who now serves as the company’s chief technology officer. That evolved into a “partly automated, partly manual” process for evaluating customers and generating reports. Two years ago, Qoves had served about 2,000 clients. Today, he says, more than 65,000 people have received a Qoves report. “Our goal is to make a robust beauty consultancy that can work at scale,” he says.

Versions of this service already exist on the internet: The subreddits r/AmIUgly, r/RateMe, and r/TrueRateMe collectively process some 14,000 submissions per week, pro bono. I once had myself evaluated by a teenaged looksmaxxer I met on Discord for an article. After a breakup, a friend of mine repeatedly asked ChatGPT what he should do to improve his looks and had it generate images of his hypothetically-enhanced face.

But Qoves claims to offer something more valuable: objective, personalized, detailed insights that will actually help you look better. We, as people, seem to view attractiveness as a mystical art; Qoves believes it can be a science. According to Hassan, Qoves’s in-house research team has compiled more than 450 “evidence-based beautification methods.” The company is advised by a board including plastic surgeons, cosmetic doctors, and dermatologists. Hassan says the app takes “anthropometric measurements” and shows clients “where they lie in relation to reference values for their demographic,” which come from published research and Qoves’s own datasets. “We increasingly rely on our own datasets as they grow larger, more diverse, and include more measures of the face than anything published,” says chief marketing officer Assad Khan.

The stakes, Qoves argues, are bigger than vanity. On its website, a page called “Why Glow-Up” cites a number of studies to claim that your looks affect everything from your dating life to your career to your happiness. In essence, your looks define your life. This is the same core premise that looksmaxxers articulate in forum screeds, but Qoves dresses it up with a slick website and citations. “A lot of people come to Qoves because they want a saner, safer, more positive, more evidence-based alternative to looksmaxxing culture,” says chief scientist Macken Murphy.

Qoves has become well-known on social media for its video content, which uses celebrity photos as examples to explain core concepts of facial attractiveness, often quoting research papers. One recent Reel examined Jennifer Lawrence’s limbal rings (the dark borders of the irises) with a paper showing that prominent ones are considered more attractive. Hassan has been posting this type of analysis on the Qoves YouTube channel since 2020, and even featured his own photos as examples in an early video, in which he enhanced his muscles with photo retouching. “We think the science of beauty is really interesting, and we want to teach people about it,” says Hassan. The takeaway of the videos is that like it or not, your appearance is being judged. So you might as well do what you can to maximize it.

From Qoves, supposedly, I could get a prescription for exactly what to maxx. No more cruel teenagers telling me I’m doughy or friendly Redditors telling me I’m not ugly. I braced myself for Qoves’s unvarnished assessment. Is my hair thinning? Is the gap in my teeth a problem? What about the left side of my mouth that doesn’t open as much as the right? Or the red dot on the tip of my nose that my dermatologist can’t remove? Or is there some other hideous deformity that everyone else stares at, but I can never truly see?

In that happy state, I submitted myself to Qoves. The process began with a questionnaire. It asked about my drinking, smoking, past procedures, and if I was comfortable receiving suggestions for injectables, invasive treatments, “semi-permanent enhancements,” and weight loss. It surveyed me about how often I think about my appearance, the amount it distresses me, and the goals I have around my facial aesthetic. It also asked what I like most (my eyes), least (my recessed chin), and a celebrity I’d like to look like (Justin Bieber). I took seven meticulously lit photos of my face from various angles, both smiling and stone-faced, and one of the top of my scalp.

The questionnaire concluded with a disclaimer, which asked me to confirm that I did not have Body Dysmorphic Disorder or other conditions affecting my perception of my appearance. This is one of several similar disclaimers I encountered throughout the Qoves process, suggesting that the company is aware of potential risks in providing craniometric measurements and surgery suggestions over the internet. “The whole point is informed choice,” says Dee Dee Koonnawarote, Qoves’s head of strategy and partnerships. “Some people read their report and decide to do nothing, and that's a completely valid outcome.” I have been writing about looksmaxxing for more than a year now, and I wonder how long I can do it before I develop some sort of complex myself. How much can I be scrutinized and how many flaws can be pointed out before I take it to heart? How durable is my self-esteem?

It took about two weeks to get my report. (I was originally told to expect my report in 28 days because I had chosen not to spend $80 for 48-hour rush delivery.) While I waited, I grew pessimistic. I worried that I had just asked a barber if I needed a haircut and would soon be handed a list of flaws that I could never unsee. When the teenage looksmaxxer evaluated me, he asked “why ur skinn looks dull? U fat?” I feared I was in for more of the same.

What I actually received was stranger. The roughly 12,000-word report, headlined “Every Glow-Up Starts By Understanding One’s Face” was so crammed with data that it took me multiple hours to read. It contained every type of chart known to math. I have looked through it dozens of times in writing this story, and I continually find new data points that I somehow missed before: 43.15-mm chin width, moderate eyebrow virility, light reddish yellowish teeth. If I were an alien and I crash-landed on another planet and my body was taken away for scientific study, the report they would write about me might sound like this.

The report is relentlessly dense. The Qoves evaluation consists of three sections: facial assessments about the face as a whole, features analysis covering each part of the face in detail, and a protocol covering what to do next. The facial assessment covers dimorphism (how male or female you look), prototypicality (normalness), proportions, and symmetry. Qoves gives me numbers for each: 72/100 prototypicality, 86/100 proportionality, and 73/100 symmetry. While taking my submission photos, I noticed that my left eye appeared markedly bigger than the right one. I feared this would be a major ding against me in the symmetry section, but Qoves said I have “strong overall balance” and a “generally harmonious appearance,” with no word about my eyes. Does this say something about the accuracy of the report, or the fallibility of my own self-perception? Did I make it up? I think back to something I read on the Qoves homepage: “Most insecurity comes from uncertainty, not knowing if your concerns are real or imagined.”

Everything about my face, it seems, can be described with numbers: I have #C36D5C Terra-cotta lips with 81% smoothness and 53 fullness. My chin balance is 88 and leans toward robust. My hair oiliness is 45, frizziness 39, shininess 60. My upper-smile arc is 39.62k. I thought of the character creation screen from a videogame, and imagined God designing me with sliders.

At certain points, I came to feel like a purebred puppy being judged by a kennel club: “Your ears are average-sized, mid-set, and rounded with subtle projection, a developed antihelix, mostly attached lobules, gentle contour, backward tilt, and a visible Darwin's tubercle which together create a compact, structurally clear ear that fits your facial proportions.” Qoves claims its report tells you “how your features might reflect your ancestry.” A section called “The “Ethnic Characteristics of Your Nose” describes mine as “Common straight long European type.” (As a child, my prodigiously-beschnozzed Jewish grandfather once caressed my nose and wondered aloud how it ended up so straight. If only he were alive to read my Qoves evaluation…)

The final portion of the report contains a 16-page protocol, which explains everything I need to do to bring myself in line with “ideal cephalometric values”—in other words, look handsome. (Cephalometry is the study and measurement of the head.) Qoves recommends that I get a shorter, curlier haircut with tapered sides and use sea-salt spray and conditioner. I should thread my eyebrows and style them with darkening gel. My daily skincare routine should include cleanser, toner, Vitamin C serum, hyaluronic acid moisturizer, azelaic acid, retinol, and sunscreen on my face, and Vitamin C and concealer under my eyes. Whitening drops on the sclera of my eyeballs are worth considering. I would be wise to include dedicated neck training with curls and extensions in my workouts multiple times per week. I should consider topical minoxidil, platelet-rich plasma sessions, a red-light hair helmet, temple filler, chin filler, Endolift, radio-frequency tightening, subtle Botox, periodic HydraFacials, polynucleotide injections, and intense pulsed light treatment (all under the advice of appropriate practitioners). And, bizarrely, I should maintain routine ear hygiene. (I think I already do.) Here, at risk of bragging, I should remind you this is the protocol for someone Qoves said looked generally good.

For an additional $180, I received another 21-page report of surgical suggestions, which included many more measurements, diagrams, and renderings. I was recommended to consider a “modest” rhinoplasty, a brow lift, genioplasty for my chin, and malar (cheekbone) augmentation. A measly $25 bought me six more suggestions for my haircut. Qoves is headquartered in London, which perhaps explains why all of the suggested styles made me look distinctively British. In the haircut renderings, Qoves also, bafflingly, removed my sleeves.

While studying the renderings of my new haircuts, I did not realize that they had also applied the cosmetic enhancements from the main report. When I finally looked back at the regular photo, my real face was a jump scare. This experience left me unnerved and skeptical about our minds’ ability to healthily process altered versions of our own faces. That same week, coincidentally, Meta announced that they were banning beauty filters for people under 18. I can see why.

Still, I emerged from Qoves with my self-confidence intact. The sheer amount of information inside the report washed over me like a wave. Anything that I could have stewed over got buried by the other 159 assessments. When the teenage looksmaxxers on Discord told me I had way too much body fat, it stuck with me for a long time. But the deluge of data in the Qoves report made it so that no one critique really hurt. There was so much wrong with me that there was nothing wrong with me. So much to do that I’ll probably do nothing.

Qoves is premised on the idea that an attractive face is a combination of correct lengths, sizes, and ratios. Looking better is as simple as knowing your measurements and getting them right, as you might with your blood pressure or weight. For a certain type of person today, “healthy living” is a numbers game, a set of biomarkers to be tracked and optimized. We can generate huge quantities of data about the body, which can then be tracked and tweaked. You can monitor your heart rate with a Whoop band, track your rest with an EightSleep mattress, test your blood with Function, sequence your genome with 23AndMe, record your workouts on Strava, and map your body composition with DEXA scans. Qoves does the same thing for your face. It even automatically enrolls you in an annual subscription, providing you with a yearly report to track your face over time.

I once traveled to London for three days with a friend. On our last night, we went to the club, got home around 5 a.m., crashed on a pullout couch, woke up two hours later, and headed to the airport. On the Tube to Heathrow, my friend turned to me gravely and said his Oura ring sleep score was very low. Shocking. But he seemed satisfied to know that he was not just sleepy, but scientifically sleepy. Sleepy according to the data. He deserved to feel so tired.

A Qoves report works the same way. I was scared my photo revealed my facial asymmetry. Then my 73/100 symmetry score allayed my fear. Or did it? When I am feeling good about my facial symmetry (as in, not thinking about it at all) a 73 sounds pretty good. But what of that missing 27? Presumably that reflects my slanted mouth, different-size eyes, and prominent moles. I am as symmetrical or asymmetrical as I think I am.

Somewhere inside the Qoves report is the justification for whatever you feel about yourself. What you seek you will find. If you are considering Qoves, you probably spend a lot of time thinking about how you look. You probably suspect that you are unattractive in some way, that your appearance is holding you back in some area of life, and hope that Qoves could improve things by helping you look better. I don’t know if it can do that for you. It didn’t for me.

But your real goal, I strongly suspect, is to feel better about yourself. I can tell you one thing for certain: Commissioning a 12,000-word report about everything on your face is the wrong way to start.