Why did I do it? Why did I shell out $eight for 50 totally different summary, impressionistic, mind-bending portraits of myself? Am I that a lot of a narcissist? Are all of us?

Our Instagram and different social feeds are at the moment flooded with these high-resolution interpretations of our faces and numerous lewks, often known as Magic Avatars. All of them come courtesy of the Lensa app, an AI-image-generation engine that creates some wild and infrequently fantasy-driven interpretations of no matter photos we feed it.

There have been different, comparable platforms like Reface, which allow you to put your face inside well-known film clips. Everybody was doing it for some time. I turned myself into Tom Cruise (opens in new tab).

The app was free (with numerous adverts, if I recall) and ultimately all of us determined that perhaps it wasn’t such a good suggestion to add our photos to some rando app developer.

Lensa fills that house however with a product that nearly calls for you pay for it, first with a tough promote on a expensive subscription payment after which extra casually with a come-on for a pay-per-AI-image batch provide.

What’s surprising to me is simply the sheer variety of individuals which are paying to have their photos digested after which spit out as putting AI artworks. The FOMO is so sturdy right here that everybody (even this now-embarrassed reporter) is succumbing. My grownup son spent virtually $15 for a batch of photos of his girlfriend.

I am not proud

Why did I do it? Two causes. I bought uninterested in seeing different individuals’s Lensa Magic Avatars on my feed and I additionally actually wanted one thing recent for Instagram. I’m sort of that manner about my social feeds, all the time attempting to maintain the pipe full for causes I can hardly clarify right here.

Including my AI photos to Instagram’s rising legion of majestic Lensa-generated portraits wasn’t laborious. The app is freely out there on iOS and Android. Opening it presents you with a $49.99 subscription provide that you may “cancel anytime.” I personally hate apps like this, ones that tease you with an extremely cool function however demand exorbitant money funds up entrance (I might also be low cost).

Like many different apps, the sub provide is sort of a entrance. In case you ignore it, the app instantly dumps you into the pay-per-play part, the place you should buy wherever from 50 ($7.99) to 100 ($14.99) AI-generated Magic Avatars with out subscribing to something.

Now, I can’t bear in mind the final time I paid $eight for the privilege of utilizing a single app function, however such was the siren tune of these lovely portraits. I rationalized the associated fee in my head, “Come on, you’d pay that a lot for 2 Krispy Kreme donuts and a water,” which is one thing I did purchase final week.

After that, the app asks you to add between 10 and 20 photos of your self in numerous poses and with a wide range of expressions. I made a decision to peruse my iPhone’s “Selfies” folder, the place I discovered a bunch of acceptable pictures. I uploaded a batch, however Lensa rejected some as unusable (it didn’t say why), so I chosen a couple of extra. In hindsight, I ought to have chosen far fewer profile pictures and pictures with me making foolish faces. As with most AI picture programs, you get what you set into Lensa.

Typically, I’m happy with the outcomes (you’ll be able to see some samples above) however I got here away uneasy, feeling somewhat bit like I’ve been performed. I ought to’ve requested some questions, so much in actual fact, earlier than importing my pictures.

A day after Lensa delivered 50 4K AI photos of me (they keep on the app, however you’ll be able to obtain your favorites in customary or 4K decision), I despatched Lensa developer Prisma Labs an inventory of questions:

• Do you retailer pictures uploaded to you? In that case, are they encrypted?
• When did you launch the Magic Avatar portion?
• How, precisely, is AI used to generate the pictures?
• How many individuals have uploaded their photos?
• Why do you front-load the subscription payment when individuals can simply pay $7.99 for 50 photos?
• How are you addressing issues about individuals’s photos being uploaded with out their permission?
• Have you ever heard about some getting used to generate grownup content material?

In some methods, you may take any – or all – of those questions and apply them to just about an AI-image generative system. Whereas all these AI programs are thrilling, they do really feel like black containers. For some, we merely put in textual content prompts, however we nonetheless don’t perceive how they’re producing artwork.

The heavy lifting behind Lensa’s Magic Avatars, as an example, is carried out by the free, open-source picture technology platform Steady Diffusion – one of many many who has been accused of appropriating artists’ work (opens in new tab) to coach its AI mannequin.

However that is simply one among my issues. One other is what occurs to the pictures we so willingly provide to it? How do we all know, for instance, that photos we add usually are not getting used to additional practice the AI? I see no strategy to decide out of that chance. 

Nor are there any prompts warning that you just shouldn’t add somebody’s picture with out permission. I’ve heard stories that some individuals are utilizing the system to generate pornographic photos of unsuspecting individuals (opens in new tab) with out their consent.

The place do our unique photos go when Lensa’s work is finished? With out info that guarantees Lensa is deleting them, I need to assume they’re conserving all of them on file. We are able to solely hope they’re a minimum of encrypted.

Prisma Labs responds

I do have some excellent news. Regardless that Prisma Labs would not embody quite a lot of what I take into account obligatory info in its app and did not reply my questions straight, it did level me to a voluminous FAQ (opens in new tab) that does handle a few of these issues.

On the query of what Lensa does with our photos, Prisma Labs writes that they are deleted from Prisma Labs’ servers as soon as processing is full. Nonetheless, the FAQ additionally incorporates this language: 

“We retailer avatars for so long as it takes to offer our customers with the service. Please observe, a brand new function, which might enable customers to completely delete their avatars from our servers is at the moment underway.”

Put one other manner, your unique pictures are gone, however these photos that Lensa created? Prisma Labs nonetheless has them. There is no such thing as a point out of knowledge encryption, by the way in which.

The FAQ doesn’t handle concerns of picture possession: The picture you add ought to be your individual or ones that you’ve the correct to entry. It does handle “sexualized” photos, however primarily the AI’s tendency to sexualize feminine characters. Extra importantly, Prisma Labs provides, “The intentional use of the app to create specific content material is completely prohibited by our Phrases of Use and obliges Lensa customers to adjust to that requirement.”

It’s not clear how Prisma Labs is policing that exact rule and, even much less helpfully, Prisma Labs provides this observe, “Sadly, all these efforts have not but made AI completely secure from biased content material and specific imagery. Due to this fact, we stipulate that the product just isn’t supposed for minors’ use and warn customers concerning the potential content material dangers.”

I can’t legitimately inform you to not strive the app, particularly not after I went forward and did it. Earlier than you do, nonetheless, be sure you’re snug with Prisma Lab’s solutions (and lack of solutions) to any of those questions.