AI-Generated Business Headshots Are Flooding LinkedIn… And They Look Terrible

Over the past year, AI-generated business headshots have exploded across LinkedIn. The pitch is seductive: upload a few selfies, pay a small fee, and receive a headshot without ever stepping in front of a camera.

But here’s the truth.

AI-generated headshots look ridiculous. And if you’ve used one before and think you look great, I’d bet that in the deep, quiet part of your mind, you know something feels off.

It doesn’t look like you.

It looks like you, if you were plastic. Or digital. Or a cartoon. Or a plastic digital cartoon.

For company leaders responsible for brand credibility, that’s a problem.

Because headshots aren’t just profile photos. They represent real people. And when your team starts to look like AI avatars instead of humans, that credibility erodes, whether anyone says it out loud or not.

A Turning Point: When A Client Drew A Line We Had No Idea Was Coming

I recently shot team headshots for a company that was a returning client. We specialize in making sure team headshots in Northbrook, Deerfield, Schaumburg, Lake County, and the northern Chicago suburbs match for companies, no matter where their offices are in the country or how long it has been since the last hire.

Their first team headshot session was last year, on-site in their Schaumburg office. Fast forward one year, and they have five new team members who needed headshots to match their website photos I took last year. No problem!

That’s exactly what we do!

The five people left happy and excited to see their images. Everyone selected from their gallery, and we delivered five polished headshots to four happy people. That’s right. One person did not like how they looked in their photos. It was no fault of theirs or the photography, based solely on self-image.

So, this is where it gets wonky. This person asked ChatGPT to generate a headshot from the image we took and provided parameters to fix what they didn’t like about themselves. What it kicked back was a headshot of this person. The company then asked us if it would be okay if we just edited the AI-generated headshot onto the background we designed for them.

My eagerness to please the company kicked right in, and I began making my edits. First, I did a side-by-side, detailed retouch to make this person look more like their idealized AI avatar, and after hours of work, I got it pretty close. But then that eagerness to please kicked back in. I also edited their AI-generated headshot onto the company background and uploaded both versions to my drive to send to them. The idea was that I would strongly suggest they use my detailed retouch, as it was still a photograph of the person, not a digital creation.

Before I hit send, I stopped myself. I took the photos out of the drive and went for a bike ride. On this ride, I thought about what I was about to do. I was about to deliver an AI-generated version of a photo I shot to a client as work I had done. No. No. No. No way. I can’t believe I was about to hit send on this overly pixelated, less than 1MB mess of an AI-generated person, just because I want our clients to be happy.

So I ended up only sending my detailed retouched file, with an explanation saying we cannot, and will not, place AI-generated people over our images and pass them off as humans. And it ended with the person loving the edit more than their AI-generated mess.

Why?

Because it was a photo of them.

It’s Not Neat. Or Cool. It’s Weird. And Unprofessional

Here’s what we see all the time:

Skin that looks like wax.
Lighting that makes no sense.
Vacant eyes.
Odd Backgrounds.
Hair and clothing that melt into strange, undefined textures.
Subtle facial distortions that make someone look like themselves, but not quite.

Oh and of course….those pearly white puppet teeth.

On their own, each of these things might seem small. Together? They create something unsettling.

And when your leadership team looks unsettling on your website, that’s not innovation.

That’s a loss of trust.

For companies investing in their brand presence, whether you’re in a Lake County office, a Northbrook corporate park, a Deerfield headquarters, or a Schaumburg business center….that loss has real consequences.

It changes how people feel about you before you ever get the chance to speak.

Everyone Is Starting to Recognize Them

Six months ago, AI headshots might have felt cutting-edge.

Now? They’re obvious.

The hyper-smooth skin.
The dramatic, studio-style rim lighting.
The identical neutral background gradients.
The slightly overconfident, fixed expressions.

We’ve reached the point where professionals can spot an AI-generated headshot within seconds.

Instead of signaling “tech-forward,” they increasingly signal, shortcutting and cost-cutting.

That’s not the message most companies in the northern Chicago suburbs intend to send.

The Cost of Looking Cheap

Let’s talk about the real driver here: cost and convenience.

AI headshots are free. They require no coordination. No scheduling. No creative direction.

Here’s the trade-off:

You save a few hundred dollars per executive.
And your website looks like a DC comic.

Professional on-site business headshots are not vanity assets. They are:

• Marketing collateral

• Press-ready materials

• Recruitment tools

• Investor-facing assets

• Personal brand foundations

For companies across the northern Chicago suburbs, investing in professional business photography (especially convenient on-site corporate headshots) ensures your leadership team looks credible.

The Difference AI Cannot Replicate

AI generates what it thinks a professional human looks like. A photographer captures who a person is.

That difference matters.

It’s in the micro-expressions that communicate warmth.

The natural posture that conveys grounded confidence.

Lighting that’s shaped around someone’s actual features, not guessed by an algorithm.

Wardrobe guidance that aligns with the company’s brand.

Real eye contact.

With on-site business headshots in Northbrook, Deerfield, Schaumburg, and Lake County, teams get consistency and cohesion without giving up convenience. But more importantly, they get authentic representation.

Photography is collaborative. It’s us and you, in a room. It’s us guiding you, as best as we can, and you guiding us with what you hope to accomplish.

AI is a computer, its zeros and ones manufacturing something over you.

And everyone can see the difference.

A Higher Standard for Leadership Teams

As a company leader, every detail communicates your standards.

Your website visuals say:

* This is how seriously we take our brand.

* This is how we present our leadership.

* This is how we invest in excellence.

AI-generated headshots communicate the opposite.

They say, “We don't care about this. We want a shortcut.”

And leadership, especially in competitive business communities like Lake County and the northern Chicago suburbs, is not built on shortcuts.