The AI Self-Portrait App That is Taking Over the Internet

Social media is being bombarded with vivid AI selfies lately. As a result, people of all ages (not just Generation Zs) are downloading the viral image editing app, Lensa, to create gloriously stylized versions of themselves.

The photo editing software is available on the App store and Google Play. It’s currently topping the charts of the highly competitive “Photo & Video” chart on the iOS App Store (surpassing TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube).

According to the digital analytics platform Sensor Tower, Lensa has received over 22.2 million downloads worldwide and has generated close to $29 million in revenue since its introduction.

Though the app, created by Prisma AI, has been a hot ticket lately, it was introduced in 2018. It offers a variety of features that let users alter backdrops, remove objects from pictures, and fix selfies imperfections.

Lensa employs the Stable Diffusion model and saw a spike in interest after introducing its AI selfie generation function, “Magic Avatars,” in late November. As a result, the number of downloads for the app increased from 219,000 in October to 1.6 million in just one month (631%!).

Both iOS and Android users can access Lensa. The app’s AI selfie generator requires users to input 10 to 20 photos of themselves to create an avatar of them in the Pop Art, Fantasy, or Anime genres.

What Are the Costs?

There is a seven-day free trial. After that period, Lensa has a premium subscription of $29.99/year or $7.99/month. The “Magic Avatar” feature, however, is not included in the free trial.

For the avatars, the prices are as follows:

50 unique avatars (5 variations of 10 different styles): US$22.90;

100 unique avatars (10 variations of 10 different styles): US$34.90;

200 unique avatars (20 variations of 10 different styles): US$ 44.90.

Ethical Controversy

Lensa is not without controversy. Numerous artists have accused stable Diffusion of utilizing their work without their consent. Many people in the digital art community have also voiced concerns about AI models mass-producing images at such low prices, especially if such pieces replicate styles that real artists have spent years perfecting.

Artist and graphic designer Lauryn Ipsum on Twitter (@LaurynIpsum) reported that in some Lensa portraits, “the mangled remains of an artist’s signature is still visible. That’s the remains of the signature of the multiple artists it stole from.”

Read the Fine Print

Another major cause of concern is Lensa’s privacy policy. For example, how is your data used? And how long are your images retained?

Lensa doesn’t specify how long they retain your personal data. It’s also not clear what the company does with it.

However, Clause 5 of Prisma’s Terms of Use, which is separate from their Privacy Policy, discloses:

“You grant us a perpetual, revocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable, sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, create derivative works from and transfer your User Content, without any additional compensation to you….The Company License is for the limited purpose of operating, developing, providing and improving Prisma and researching, developing and improving our existing and new products, including but not limited to Prisma.”

And here’s an added kicker:

“You grant us consent to use the User Content, regardless of whether it includes an individual’s name, likeness or persona, sufficient to indicate the individual’s identity. You further acknowledge and agree that our use of your User Content will not result in any injury to you or to any person you authorized to act on your behalf.”

Is Lensa Using Your Image to Train Their AI?

TechCrunch reports that Prisma Labs admitted that it uses AWS cloud services to process customers’ photos. Then the images are deleted only after training an AI model on a user’s photos.

Since AI tools require training on datasets of images, Lensa users may see their image and likeness pop up in datasets years from now. However, since data is hard to come by, and datasets are expensive to generate, Lensa may consider its pool of users as free, readily-available volunteers.

Tell Lensa to Delete Your Personal Data

For your protection, it’s best to ask them outright to delete your data. Clause 6 of their Privacy Policy states:

“You can send us an email at [email protected] to request access to, modification, correction, update, erasure or deletion of any Personal Data that you have provided to us and that we have about you.”

If You’re Looking to Create Beautiful AI Art for Free

Remember that Stable Diffusion is an open-source (i.e., free) machine-learning model that you can run on your computer. With it, you can generate as many images as you want from text.

So if you want to try out this kind of AI technology (and have at least 6 GB of VRAM), feel free to try out Stable Diffusion here.

Disclaimer: The original version of this story was published on another platform. Link to original version: https://medium.com/@randymasters/this-ai-self-portrait-app-is-taking-over-the-internet-10f5b000b022.DD