Is It Safe to Use AI Face Art?

You might have noticed recently an interesting trend on social media: More and more people are sharing portraits of themselves “painted” by AI. This AI art is generated by software to make fantastical portraits in seconds. But while the technology and its results are cool, there are concerns over it privacy and security implications.

The most popular app for AI face art at the moment appears to be Lensa. While the app first came out four years ago, it only recently blew up in true popularity thanks to the trend of AI face art. Lensa lets you upload anywhere from 10 to 20 pictures of your face, which it then analyzes to power the end result: potentially hundreds of different AI portraits the app calls “Magic Avatars.”

Concerns have arisen, however, of what the app is actually doing with this data. It’s not just any personal information after all: it’s your face. Improper use of those images could be detrimental to your personal cybersecurity, and the cybersecurity of anyone who uses the app.

As it turns out, the original images of your face should be safe. According to Lensa’s privacy policy, the company only uses this data to generate your Magic Avatars. Since that’s a one-time deal, the app is set to delete all face data after 24 hours. That’s relatively secure as far as tech company policies go, so you should feel safe uploading your images to the app. It’s likely less secure to upload photos of yourself to other services, like Facebook or Instagram, which many of us have done already.

The more pressing concern, however, is Lensa’s policies surrounding your AI art. The app essentially claims total ownership over anything you create with their services:

You grant us a perpetual, revocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable, sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, create derivative works from and transfer your User Content, without any additional compensation to you and always subject to your additional explicit consent for such use where required by applicable law and as stated in our Privacy Policy.

In theory, Lensa could use your AI art in advertisements, or sell it to whoever they wanted to, all without your consent or without paying you a dime. Of course, it’s all hypothetical. Lensa isn’t using its users’ data like this, at least not that we know of. So, for now, it should be safe to see what fun things AI can do with your face. Just be aware of what Lensa could do in the future.