Over the past week or so, word began to spread that there was a free one-week trial of the Lensa AI: Photo & Video Editor app that would allow you to upload 10-20 selfies and have artificial intelligence spit out 50 avatars in under an hour. If, after reading that, you found yourself muttering, "what the hell is Lensa?" Don't even worry about it. Prior to Sunday I didn't know what it was either, but am I now in possession of 50 AI-created portraits of myself ranging in thematic expressions, from "oh wow," to "am I holding a wand?" Well, yes, I certainly am.
The Lensa AI: Photo & Video Editor app is made by a company called Prisma Labs out of Sunnyvale, California, and, after seemingly appearing out of nowhere, it is currently #1 in Apple's U.S. app store. The punchline is that the "free" trial wasn't exactly free. After uploading roughly 12 of my own selfies over the weekend, I received a prompt asking for $3.99 before I could receive my 50 avatars. Normally that would have me backing out and heading for what I'd been doing prior to accessing the app — watching dog videos on TikTok — but in this particular instance, they got me. After already arriving at the point where 50 AI portraits of myself seemed like something worth pursuing, paying $3.99 for the experience seemed no less reasonable.
