In Ovid’s “Pygmalion” an artist creates an ivory sculpture of a woman so beautiful that he falls in love with it. He kisses his statue, adorns it with jewels and finery, and prays to Venus for a bride just like her. Venus answers his prayer. She grants the statue life, turning ivory to flesh. Pygmalion marries his ideal creation, later known as “Galatea.”

Artists have reimagined the tale of Pygmalion (written in 8 A.D.) for centuries, in countless stories of alluring dolls or automatons who either come to life or hover between seeming fully alive and being inanimate objects, from the ballet “Coppélia” to Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis,” the 1987 film “Mannequin” (starring Kim Cattrall), the Spike Jonze film “Her,” and even Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” in 2023. In all cases though, “aliveness” is presented as the desired option.

But in our new, artificial intelligence-driven world, where human reality recedes ever further from our grasp, the Pygmalion paradigm is changing.

Instead of transcending from inanimate substance to human flesh, today’s Galateas go the opposite way, morphing into artists’ creations and subjecting their living flesh to tinkering and inanimate substances — gleefully announcing it all on social media, itself yet another form of irreality.

The mother-daughter duo of Kris and Kylie Jenner are at the forefront of this shift, ushering in a new era of beauty culture. Now not only can celebrities acknowledge plastic surgery, they might also reveal their doctors’ names and even drop surgical details, essentially stamping their aesthetically altered body parts with a medicalized luxury logo. Move over Balenciaga and Chanel, the poshest labels now read “Dr. Steven Levine” or “Dr. Garth Fisher,” the plastic surgeons cited by the Jenners.