With people sharing AI-generated portraits on social media, attention is being drawn to the Lensa AI photo app.
The app, from Prisma AI, has been around since 2018, but the new “magic avatar” feature debuted last month. The feature creates highly-stylized portraits that users share on Twitter, Instagram and TikTok.
The feature produces a portrait — or avatar — in styles such as Pop Art, Fantasy or Anime.
In a post on Instagram, the company explained that “This is not a filter or an effect. These AI avatars are generated from scratch but with your face in mind. Upload 10-20 pictures, give it a few minutes, and get hundreds of artworks created by #artificialintelligence for you!”
Lensa AI is available on the Apple Store and Google Play. It is currently among the top downloaded apps in the Apple Store.
The app is free to download, but comes with in-app purchases starting at $3.99 (for 50 unique avatars) and subscriptions starting at $7.99. According to TechCrunch, the free version of the app is very limited and doesn’t include the viral magic avatar feature.
Some users have raised concerns about the use of their photos and data. Some are raising concerns that the company owns the photos that are uploaded, while others asking users to support artists rather that AI companies.
Others have raised concerns that the artwork is sexist.
TechCrunch reported that Prisma said that it uses AWS cloud services to process users’ photos and as soon as an AI model is made of a user’s photos, the images are deleted.
