This post was written by Melanin Elevatin (@MelaninElevatin) & edited by The41stAmendment
The purpose of this post is to highlight the dangers associated with using image based AI generator apps. As someone who has researched and studied AI pretty extensively, I am here with my soapbox to ruin your day by talking about why you should delete LensaAI and stop blindly using image based AI generator apps. Let’s start with who owns the app. LensaAI is owned by Prisma Labs which offers photo editing technologies, filtering, face retouching, borders + more. LensaAI been around since 2018 but grew to be extremely popular during late November after the company released its magic avatar feature. During the first 5 days of December the app was downloaded 4 million+ times which is significantly more than the 2 million downloads of November (full month). While sitting on the top charts in Apple and Google app stores the company saw $8.2M in sales. Please note this post wasn’t published to scare people into refraining from using image based AI generator apps. Do whatever your heart desires, if you want to use these apps then go for it.
With the LensaAI app someone can generate hyperrealistic nudes which could fuel blackmail, harassment & revenge porn. If someone decides to upload nudes & generate fakes then release them it wouldn’t be considered revenge porn because technically it’s not your nudes, instead they’re “AI generated renderings of a body”. The slope is extremely slippery. There is currently very little legislation around AI-related ethics, data handling, and limitations due to the newness of the technology and rapid development. Sometimes technology moves faster than the law. There are very minimal protections against misuse. LensAI users are being exploited to train AI generators, but they have no copyrights or ownership over the AI art that is built upon their works due to the lack of legislation. If you are extremely curious to learn about AI generators, there are generators that you can use where you feed it words and it outputs an image. You can use those without giving away rights to your likeness and your photos. They still have risks. This is not an endorsement. I encourage everyone reading this to do your research instead of blindly supporting trends.
LensaAI users are also at risk of hypersexualization without ever even sharing nude images with the app. An example is shown below.
A few screenshots of the LensaAI TOS which everyone should read is shown below and the full terms can be read HERE. Just to give a brief summary of the TOS it states that although their algorithms will do it, you should not use LensaAI to create images for unlawful, libelous, defamatory, obscene, pornographic, indecent, lewd, suggestive, harassing, threatening, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, abusive, inflammatory or fraudulent purposes.
Fact Check:
The 41st Amendment 
Leave a Reply