By An AI photo craze recreating modern selfies in a 1980s style has taken over Indian social media this week.
Users upload a recent picture to an AI tool that preserves their facial features but reworks clothing, hairstyle, lighting, background and colour grading to match the retro era.
Politicians including Piyush Goyal, Kiren Rijiju and Himanta Biswa Sarma have shared AI-generated retro portraits, while Shashi Tharoor instead posted a genuine photo from the 1980s.
Bollywood stars Kiara Advani and Sidharth Malhotra, plus cricketers Virat Kohli and KL Rahul, have also joined the trend.
The craze spread via Instagram’s ‘Add Yours’ sticker and follows other viral AI image trends this year, including Studio Ghibli-style portraits and action-figure avatars.
The 80s photo trend follows a string of earlier viral AI image crazes in 2026, including Studio Ghibli-style portraits and action-figure avatars.
The resulting images typically mimic vintage analogue camera aesthetics, ranging from retro Bollywood-style studio portraits to classic family photo album looks.
Users generate the images by uploading a recent photo and asking an AI tool to preserve their facial features while changing clothing, hairstyle, lighting, background and colour grading to match the 1980s.
The trend has spread across Instagram, TikTok and X, with users sharing their AI-generated retro portraits alongside captions reflecting on how much has changed since the decade.
Some commentators have raised questions about the privacy and data implications of uploading personal photos to AI image tools to generate these viral portraits.
Actors Kiara Advani and Sidharth Malhotra were among the Bollywood stars who joined the trend, sharing their AI-generated 1980s portraits on social media.
The trend was popularised on Instagram through the platform’s ‘Add Yours’ sticker, which lets users chain their own versions of a viral format onto a shared thread.
Congress MP Shashi Tharoor notably opted out of using AI altogether, instead sharing an actual photograph of himself from the 1980s.
Vintage 1980s film camera (representative image), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
