What an AI photo of myself taught me about motivation

Draft: Zain's voice pass pending. Adapted from a LinkedIn post; he reviews before this publishes.

I used the Flux LoRA model from Black Forest Labs on my own photos, mostly out of curiosity. The results were unreasonable: images of me that looked like they belonged at a fashion week show. I know they're generated, not real. But they showed me a version of what I could look like if I actually focused on my health, and that turned out to be genuinely motivating.

I've never felt especially confident about my looks. Seeing myself rendered that way didn't just boost my ego for an afternoon. It nudged me toward taking my health more seriously and holding a more positive image of myself day to day. A new perspective, even a synthetic one, can shift something real.

Thanks to Sridev Ramesh at 100xEngineers for introducing me to the tool. (And yes, some of the generated images were absolutely not ready for the spotlight. I had to narrow down from a lot of options before landing on the one I actually use as my profile photo.)