A viral AI photo trend recreating selfies in an 80s style has spread across Indian social media this week.
The format involves uploading a current photo to an AI tool that preserves facial features while altering clothing, hairstyle, lighting, background and colour grading to fit the decade.
Politicians Piyush Goyal, Kiren Rijiju and Himanta Biswa Sarma have all shared AI-generated retro portraits, while Shashi Tharoor instead posted an actual 1980s photograph.
Bollywood’s Kiara Advani and Sidharth Malhotra, along with cricketers Virat Kohli and KL Rahul, have also joined the craze online.
The trend spread largely via Instagram’s ‘Add Yours’ sticker and follows earlier viral AI image crazes this year, including Studio Ghibli-style portraits and action-figure avatars.
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.
Cricketers Virat Kohli and KL Rahul were also among the public figures who shared AI-generated 80s-style portraits, adding to the trend’s reach among sports fans.
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.
Vintage 1980s film camera (representative image), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
