Your AI-Generated LinkedIn Photo Isn't Fooling Anyone

You can spot an AI headshot from across a crowded LinkedIn feed. Skin like poured resin. A jawline no amount of gym visits could earn honestly. Eyes that catch a light source that doesn't exist anywhere in the room. It takes the generator about ninety seconds and costs less than a coffee, and thousands of professionals have decided that's a fair trade for a profile photo. It usually isn't.

The Tells (Besides the Occasional Sixth Finger)

AI headshots have a house style, and everyone's eye has learned to recognise it, even if nobody can quite say how.

• Skin with the texture of a phone case — smooth in a way real pores never are

• A background that suggests an office nobody has ever actually worked in

• Symmetry so perfect it edges into slightly unsettling

• Collars, buttons and earrings that dissolve into abstract shapes if you zoom in

• An expression that's technically a smile but has never once felt an emotion

The technology has come a long way. It can now give you a jawline you don't have and a soul you clearly do.

Why It's a Bigger Problem Than It Looks

Nobody consciously thinks “that's an AI image, how suspicious.” What actually happens is smaller and worse: a flicker of doubt, gone almost as soon as it arrives, but registered all the same. On LinkedIn specifically — a platform that runs entirely on the idea that you're a real, competent, trustworthy person — that flicker matters. Recruiters, clients and collaborators are all making a snap judgement about you before they've read a word of your profile, and “this person couldn't be bothered with a real photo” is not the judgement you're after.

What a Real Photographer Actually Does Differently

I don't own a studio, and I'm not going to pretend that's a strategic choice rather than a way of avoiding rent. What it means in practice is that I come to you — your office, your kitchen table, once memorably a converted shed that somebody's business now officially runs from. We spend the first ten minutes talking about anything except the camera, because “just relax” has never once relaxed anyone, and by the time I actually start shooting you've usually forgotten I'm doing it.

Pricing is upfront, agreed before I turn up, with no surprise final invoice waiting for you afterwards. And if you get the shots back and don't love them, we sort it — no arguing, no small print.

The Honest Trade-off

An AI headshot costs nothing and takes ninety seconds, and it looks like it. A real one costs money and half an hour of your afternoon, and it looks like you — on a good day, ideally after you've remembered to drink some water, which is more than I can say for most of my own mornings before the second cup of tea.

If you'd rather spend the half hour and keep the trust of everyone who looks at your profile, book a session and I'll come to you.