What you should know about Lensa AI, the maker of viral selfies?

If your social feeds are flooded with shiny, anime and fairy princess portraits of your friends, you can blame Lensa AI.

Like Dall.E, which went viral earlier this year, Lensa has made its way to the top of the app store for generating stunning images of people from image prompts.

As of this week, it’s the most popular iPhone app on the App Store, although you have to pay to generate the images.

How much does Lensa AI cost?

For £32.99 you can subscribe to Lensa AI for a year (with the option of a free trial week), which will save you 51% on future avatars. However, people don’t mind paying for it.

During the week-long trial you can get 50 avatars or 10 images in five styles for £1.79

How does Lensa AI work?

Once logged in, you will be prompted to upload 10 selfies and choose a gender.

Lensa takes your selfies, analyzes them and generates “magic avatars” of you in different styles based on the photos you add to them. The app can also be used to edit your photos, from skin retouching to blur backgrounds, and can be used to edit videos.

“Magic avatars consume massive amounts of processing power to create awesome avatars for you,” Lensa’s checkout page says. “It’s expensive, but we’ve made it as affordable as possible.”

After about half an hour you get 50 to 200 pictures with themes like “cosmos”, “fairy princess”, “fantasy” or “anime”.

What’s the problem with AI-generated art?

While it can be a lot of fun these days, like most apps, privacy is an issue, especially with an app that uses your photos.

According to the app’s privacy policy, your uploaded photos will only be used for applying filters and effects.

Note, however, that Lensa can use your uploaded photos to train its AI. The Terms of Service state that when you upload your photos, you grant Lensa a “perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable, sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, distribute, and create derivative works from your User Content without additional compensation to you and always subject to your additional explicit consent to such use if required by applicable law.

Security experts have warned that by using Lensa you give permission to release ownership of the generated photo.

“Like apps in the past, such as FaceApp, that required a lot of permissions and access to data to work, people need to be careful about what they show, own, share, or even enjoy on those apps. says Jake Moore. , ESET Global cybersecurity advisor.

Moore explained that the generated images are “placed in a database along with potentially other identifiable information such as the user’s IP address and their device cookies.”

“This invasive behavior can be used to fine-tune their algorithms so they can learn a lot about their users and their habits,” added Moore.

“This personal data is often used to microtarget people with ads, but it can also become a trap for cybercriminals looking for sensitive and personally identifiable information.”

There’s also the issue of bias creeping into AI systems, with users complaining that their AI-generated images on Lensa are overly sexualized, making people appear thinner or fairer than they actually are.

What can you do to keep your photos safe?

Like most of us, you can email if you’ve already uploaded your photos to the app [email protected] send and ask them to delete your personal information.

Send an email if your photos are used in advertisements [email protected]to have these permissions removed.

Lensa’s privacy policy adds that Lensa may contact you to better understand your request “in the event of a vague request for access, deletion, opposition or any other request to exercise these rights”.

However, if you cannot prove it, she reserves the right to “deny your request”. It can take up to 90 days for approved requests to be processed.