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Create a glossy avatar of yourself in no time: The app that makes this possible has been downloaded millions of times.
What is it about? With the Lensa app, you can create an avatar of yourself and have your own likeness appear in the style of Japanese comics, as a princess or astronaut. The “Magic Avatar” was launched at the end of November and has since taken off worldwide. While the app had been downloaded 22.2 million times before the introduction of the new feature between 2018 and December of this year, there were already 4 million downloads in the first five days of December, according to the US tech magazine “Wired”.
Legend:
The US company Prisma Labs is behind Lensa. On Twitter, it advertises with particularly eye-catching avatars.
Screenshot Twitter
The app can be used free of charge but with restrictions for seven days. Then there are different subscription models.
How does the app work? To get an avatar, you have to upload between 10 and 20 pictures of yourself. The app recommends using selfies with different backgrounds and poses. An artificial intelligence (AI) then identifies a person’s characteristics – such as face, eyes, hair – and renders them in the desired style.
What do critics say? The criticism of the app can be roughly divided into three categories:
- art heist: Artists fear that the app will devalue their work. It is also unclear how the company trained its AI. Comparable providers have been proven to have stolen images in the past. Some users even claim to have discovered artists’ signatures in the background of their avatar pictures. However, the company behind Lensa has stated that these are not real signatures, but also fragments generated by the AI.
- sexism, racism: Many women in particular report that their avatars have a lot of bare skin, large breasts or unnaturally large eyes. Even pictures of children have been sexualized. The company states that neither nudity nor children are allowed. People of Color also report that their facial features and skin tone are modeled after people of northern European descent.
- Monitoring: Biometric data of a person can be collected with photos. It is unclear whether the provider also saves metadata about the images, such as the location where they were taken.
Who is behind this? Lensa is published by Prisma Labs. According to the industry portal “Tech Crunch”, the technology is based on the open source program “Stable-Diffusion”, which generates images using neural networks. The company states that it stores the data on Amazon Web Services servers in the USA.
Is the app safe? As the founder of Prisma Labs explained to Wired, photos are deleted after uploading. But doubts are justified. The terms of use state that users retain ownership of the avatars, but that the company can use them for its own purposes. If you want, you can email the company to request deletion. However, Prisma Labs reserves the right not to do so.
It is also questionable what else the app collects on the cell phone, which could become problematic. However, one can assume that this will be on a similar scale to other apps. In addition, these features could be partially turned off.
Why is Lensa taking off now? There have been several similar online trends in the recent past – most recently in 2020 with “FaceApp”. For many, a free app is quickly downloaded. In any case, the question of where the path leads to is more important. In addition to Lensa, another AI innovation is causing a stir these days with the text program ChatGPT. Concerns are growing that artificial intelligence could soon overtake natural intelligence.