[imagesource: Instagram / lensa.ai]

Is your Instagram feed currently packed with whimsical AI-generated selfies that somehow bypass the uncanny valley? Same.

Social media has become flooded with people posting AI-generated images of themselves looking like magical, ethereal characters from the distant future.

Slide after slide shows users metamorphosed into fairies, warriors, cyborgs, and elves or some kind of living artwork taken straight out of a big-budget science fiction film.

Photo editing app Lensa AI is behind the boom, soaring in popularity over the weekend as its artificial intelligence (AI) selfie generator went viral.

The artificial intelligence app has been around since 2018, but the new ‘Magic Avatars’ feature has pushed it into the limelight.

The app was quickly boosted to the top of Apple’s App Store charts, beating the likes of TikTok and Instagram, notes PetaPixel:

Lensa uses the open-source Stable Diffusion model. Users need to upload 10 to 20 photographs of themselves to enable the app’s AI selfie generator to produce an avatar of them in styles such as Pop Art, Fantasy, and Anime.

After an in-app purchase, the app gives back 50 portraits in these various different art styles:

“This is not a filter or an effect,” the app, which was developed by California-based Prisma Labs, writes. “These AI avatars are generated from scratch but with your face in mind.”

Celebs have had fun transforming through the app:

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Lensa: Photo Editor by Prisma Labs (@lensa.ai)

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Lensa: Photo Editor by Prisma Labs (@lensa.ai)

But they’re hardly the target market as they already get to spend some of their days in fantasy worlds through movie-making.

Rather, the real quirk is about how it turns everyday citizens into fantastical creatures:

 

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A post shared by ☆ ✨ (@baddiadi_)

Modern AI is pretty crazy these days. @PrismaAI took a swing on me and the results are crazy in my opinion. Very rich details and unique spin on looks. Going to have some fun with this. #ai #MachineLearning #gpt4 #tensor #gpt3 #PyTorch #cuda @nvidia pic.twitter.com/iVuA510YNQ

— Bitsbetrippin (@BitsBeTrippin) November 27, 2022

Search the #lensa hashtag on Instagram and you’ll see tons more where that all came from:

Lensa is available on iOS and Android and offers a free seven-day trial for new users. However, the “Magic Avatars” isn’t free, even during the trial.

Before you get too carried away, here’s something to bear in mind.  ARTnews reckons this app is a bit tricksy:

But, before you slam the purchase button, a word of warning: Lensa’s privacy policy and terms of use stipulate that the images users submit to generate their selfies, or rather the “Face Data,” can be used by Prisma AI, the company behind Lensa, to further train the AI’s neural network.

Prisma Labs apparently told TechCrunch that it uses Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud services to process users’ photos and deletes all the user’s images as soon as an AI model is trained on their photos.

It is not totally clear whether it is a bad thing that your face data, which includes position, orientation, and face topology, is being harvested as you enjoy these apps.

Whatever, you deserve to be a space-traversing god or woodland wonderwoman. Go on, have fun.

[sources:petapixel&artnews]