Welcome to FTW Explains, a guide to catching up on and better understanding stuff going on in the world. Have you seen stuff about Lensa or some really stunning artsy-looking portraits on Twitter or Instagram? And you’re wondering what’s up with that? We’re here to help.
This is the latest trend in social media: An app that can make gorgeous self portraits that you can post on Twitter, Instagram and the like. It’s everywhere! Celebrities are using them too!
But what’s the deal with it? Is there controversy with it? How can you use it? We’ll break it all down for you below:
Lensa? What's that?
It’s an app made by Prisma AI that you can download on Apple or Android. It’s used to edit images, but its AI avatars are all the rage.
What a fun trend! As an actress, I *do* love being other characters. 😋 Thank you to the Lensa app for the artwork! pic.twitter.com/5sqiYkkezg
— Danica McKellar (@danicamckellar) December 6, 2022
And how does that work?
You upload a bunch of photos of yourself and the AI gets to work.
Worth noting: It’s free for a one-week trial, but it costs money after that — $7.99 a month.
And downloading those AI images? It’s $3.99 for 50 avatars.
You said celebs are using it?
Seems fun. What's the controversy?
Lensa and parent company Prisma have encountered controversy, primarily as a result of the company’s privacy policy. Across the internet, people are skeptical about how their data is being used via Lensa — like you should with any company. While Prisma/Lensa says that it “do[es] not use photos you provide…for any reason other than to apply different stylized filters or effects to them,” the company retains personal data for a time not specified in the privacy policy.
And there are concerns about it using a model known as Stable Diffusion. More from Tech Crunch:
Lensa is built on Stable Diffusion’s free, open source image generator but acts as a middleman. Send Lensa 10-20 selfies and $7.99 ($3.99 if you sign up for a free trial) and the app does the heavy lifting for you behind the scenes, handing back a set of stylized portraits in an array of styles like sci-fi, fantasy and anime. Anyone with sufficient processing power can install Stable Diffusion on a machine, download some models and get similar results, but Lensa’s avatars are impressive and Instagram-ready enough that droves of people are more than happy to pay for the convenience.
AI “learns” by taking art from so many sources, so there are concerns about what it means to have a machine steal from actual, human artists.
