Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly advanced and present in our daily lives and now it has another novelty, it is possible to improve your photos or create fake selfies for your social networks or dating apps.
The new tool is called PhotoAI, and for $19, you can take 12 to 20 photos of yourself that are poorly or poorly lit and turn them into practically other images.
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In addition, they can choose which social media this photo will be added to, for example, if you select the “LinkedIn” package it will generate photos of you wearing a suit or business clothes. On the other hand, if you choose the “Tinder” option, the tool promises to make you “the best you've ever seen” – which apparently means making you look your best, right down to a leather jacket and sunglasses.
You can also create artistic Polaroids, which turn you into memes, or make portraits that copy the aesthetics of famous artists.
After sending your photos, the site promises to return the results in 12 hours. The AI model used to generate your images is also deleted after seven days, as per the platform's privacy policy.
The Vice site tested some volunteers. The test was the executive Emanuel Maiberg, for that he chose the “Tinder” package and in less than four hours later he received a link to a gallery of 78 images that included photographs that would work well for Tinder and Linkedin profiles.
Importantly, with many AI-generated images, as soon as you look at the photos they may look flawless, but if you do a closer inspection, they end up failing the test. And detail, there are some photographs that can come out totally distorted, quite hilarious and even scary.
For example, the photos below of Emanuel really look great, a perfect quality to post on his Linkedin profile, but still, his mouth is not entirely true and has some flaws.
In other images, the Tinder package gave Emanuel a leather jacket and sunglasses. Again, neither is entirely believable if you look at it for more than a second.
According to the creator of the system, Sebastien Lhomme, the platform works by generating a “fine-tuning” model based on the photos sent by the user. Then the results are filtered through a second model that applies the chosen style and finally becomes publicly available.
In other words, you're not paying for fancy AI technology, but for a service that simply inputs your photos into a pre-existing AI imager. Similar services have popped up in recent times that, for a fee, will use AI to generate text prompts, which can, of course, be used to create those photos.
And the legal issues? or stay?
Lately, these AI photo generators have caused a lot of controversy. Some artists have complained that these tools use their arts training material without permission. So while creating AI self-portraits can be silly and fun, it's still unclear where and when they can be used - legally or morally speaking.
It's also unclear whether the AI-generated selfies violate the terms of service on dating apps, which have rules against impersonation and false statements.
Lhomme claims that he will not be held responsible for the way people use the photos his service generates. He points out that even without the help of AI, the public has been using Photoshop or hiring freelancers to modify their photos for a long time, even if the results are not as immediate.
“The technology is so new that the use cases it will solve in the coming months/years will inevitably lead to interesting questions about legality and morality,” said Lhomme. “Things will be messy for a while, and I think collaboration will need to happen between all parties involved to decide what are the best rules and responsibilities for everyone to ensure the ethical use of such technologies.”
PhotoAI's terms of service state that users are "not allowed to upload photos of others" and "upload nude or pornographic photos".
Because it may cause some lawsuits and copyright violations, many platforms have stopped using AI-generated images. However, Lhomme suggests that AI-generated photos will eventually become inevitable. After all, he observes that many selfies are already digitally manipulated by image adjustment software found in smartphone cameras – and most people don't even notice.
“Of course, the technology isn't there yet, but it will be soon,” Lhomme said. "And once AI-generated photos are indistinguishable from 'real' photos, the question of whether they are real or not will become irrelevant."
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