It's one thing to use an app to airbrush one of your photos to get rid of blemishes but now there's one that will turn your selfies into an avatar or beautiful masterpiece. The number one free app on the App Store, Lensa AI, is a photo editing tool that lets you turn your picture into a work of art thanks to artificial intelligence.
The app has been around since 2018 but became popular thanks to it's 'Magic Avatars' which debuted last month and are a hit on social media. The downside is it's not free - according to the company the feature uses “tremendous computation power” to work, meaning you will have to fork out some cash for the pretty pictures.
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How does it work?
The app states that it takes four simple steps to get your avatars. In the first step you will be taken to a page that tells you what to expect as well as a disclaimer for the possible wacky images that the AI may produce.
It warns you about the 'artefacts, inaccuracies and defects' that you might come across and asks you to 'acknowledge and accept the risk' before you continue.
Step two gives you an example of the type of selfies that work best on the system. Close-up selfies of the same person, with different backgrounds, angles and expressions are advised for the best results while glasses on your face, pictures with more than one person and crowded backgrounds are a big no-no.
In step three you choose your selfies, the app recommends 10-20 photos for the best results. Step four you are sent to the check out page where you choose how many images you want to pay for before the app generates the images which can take up to 20 minutes.
The verdict
Glasses were a no-no in the instructions but that proved difficult for me with prescription lenses always glued to my face due to my poor eye sight. The images were stunning but a little bit unnerving because of how accurate they were. If you could ignore the glasses melting into your face and the idea that a robot knows exactly what you look like now, they turned out quite well.
The images are placed in 'packs' that turn your selfies into different styles of art depending on the number of pictures you pay for. They range from fantasy, focus, fairy princess, pop-art, anime, rock star, superhero and much more.
The app also asked you to choose your gender before it began generating the images and while I chose male, that didn't stop it from turning me into a gorgeous and mysterious Lara Croft figure or an enchanting fairy princess, but I'm not complaining.
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While social media feeds are littered with them, not everybody is a big fan of the app. Many say it’s popularity has added to the conversation of AI real artists.
Other sceptics have asked questions about what exactly the app and it’s parent company Prisma are using the images for. While the company says it does "not use photos you provide...for any reason other than to apply different stylized filters or effects to them," the company does keep personal data for a time that isn’t specified in the privacy policy.
Users do have the option to ask for the company to delete any of the personal data provided to Prisma by emailing them, but the policy also says, "We may not accommodate a request to change information if we believe the change would violate any law or legal requirement or cause the information to be incorrect."
Lensa AI's subscription costs £36.99 per year, but you can opt for the seven day free trial that gives you a 50% discount on their services. With the discount you get 50 avatars for £2.49, 100 for £3.99 and 200 for £6.99.
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