Is reality failing to provide as it should? Have you ever imagined yourself as an elf, a fairy, or someone with red hair? We can lean towards fantasy with AI art. To picture oneself as an avatar from another planet, or merely to see whether we’d look well with bleached brows or a pixie cut.
Lensa AI is the software responsible for this diversion from reality, but there are many more like it. It originally appeared on the scene in 2018, but since Lensa AI just released a new “Magic Avatars” feature that makes use of the open source, free technology Stable Diffusion, we’ve seen a rise in user adoption. Simply sign up for a “free trial” (you must pay $3.99 to utilize the function), shoot a few selfies, and Lensa will generate a series of stylized photos for you to share on social media. It sounds easy enough.
The first reaction has been good; it has made hot individuals hotter, and it has the potential to trigger gender euphoria in trans and gender varied users.
However, as with other AI-related products, Lensa should be used with caution. While everyone in the industry will tell you that technology has come a long way, there is still a long path ahead of it, and its potential must still be refined. Because AI is human, it has all of the same prejudices as humans. Because people give the data that machine learning uses to train itself, Lensa’s results reflect our white, patriarchal society back to us.
Those who have used Lensa have praised it for adhering to conventional beauty standards while creating these images for Twitter. Some users have said that the software made them look thinner in their final avatars than they really were. Others have pointed out that Lensa has made people of color look lighter, which shows that technology is never neutral.