Booming Lensa AI app raises concerns among artists and adds fuel to debate over privacy

The rights of human artists are in danger due to the growing popularity of art made by the AI generators.

Many artists have spoken out against their use, like Greg Rutkowski, a fantasy artist whose work is being unashamedly ripped off so often that his style has become essentially synonymous with cheap-looking, computer-generated imitations.

"I probably won't be able to find my work out there because [the internet] will be flooded with AI art," he told MIT Technology Review back in September. "That's concerning."

The Lensa AI app could be mainly criticized for the neural network Stable Diffusion – the free and open-source. This neural network powers algorithms of the Lensa using randomly millions of images available online without any artists` permission.

"Seeing a Lensa portrait where what was clearly once an artist's signature is visible in the bottom right and people are still trying to argue it isn't theft," tweeted graphic designer Lauryn Ipsum.

The Lensa application is widely popular now for its “Magic avatar” feature. The AI-powered tool generates portraits from 10-20 uploaded selfies by facial and background retouching in “avatar” style. At a negligible fee (ca. $8) gets every user a batch of 50 generated images.

More than 4 million people downloaded the Lensa AI application in early December as per SensorTower preliminary report. The number of users is growing these days but there is still no reliable information on how the uploaded data is being used and stored by the company. WIRES published several important issues to be considered before downloading the app.