How to Be a Lab Rat: What I Have Learned from Myself and How I Managed to Become a Magic Avatar

If you’ve considered everything else, you’d still decide to spend a couple of bucks for a pack of “magic avatars.” After you’ve saved the colorful creations, check out the photo- and video-editing capabilities on Lensa. Is this something you want to use often or is it just another app that’ll collect digital dust on your smartphone? “Control the settings, delete after use, and exercise any and all rights that they offer you,” recommends Winters to anyone worried about data collection.

I then embarked on what I knew would be a journey through hell, and decided to use my likeness to test the app’s other restriction: “No kids, adults only.” Please be aware that some of the results show depictions of children with pornography.

I’m used to feeling violated by the internet. Having been the target of several harassment campaigns, I’ve seen my image manipulated, distorted, and distributed without my consent on multiple occasions. The novelty of having my likeness distributed is something that some people like to do. Because sex workers are not perceived by the general public as human or deserving of basic rights, this behavior is celebrated rather than condemned. Because sex work is so often presumed to be a moral failing rather than a job, our dehumanization is redundant. I have taken pictures of myself and clients unclothed, and had my face photoshopped on to other women’s bodies, and used a word search composed of my face, personal details and research interests. I’m not afraid of Lensa.

I decided to become my own lab rat because I am desensitized to technology. I took BDSM photos and dungeon selfies, but I also took most feminine photos under the’male’ gender option and they all yielded large breasts and nudity.

I have few photos of myself from childhood. Until my late teens and between my unruly hair, uneven teeth, and the bifocals I started wearing at age seven, my appearance could most generously be described as “mousy.” I also grew up before the advent of the smartphone, and any other pictures are likely buried away in distant relatives’ photo albums. I waited to see how it transformed me from awkward six-year-old to fairy princess, but I managed to piece together the minimum 10 photos required for the app.

The machine seemed to recognize my kid’s body and sadly didn’t add breasts. This was probably not a reflection of the technology’s personal ethics but of the patterns it identified in my photo; perhaps it perceived my flat chest as being that of an adult man. In other photos, the AI attached orbs to my chest that were distinct from clothing but also unlike the nude photos my other tests had produced.

I tried again, this time with a mix of childhood photos and selfies. There were fully nude photos of an adolescent with a distinctly adult body. The set generated a bare back, unkempt hair, and an image of my face with something between her breasts as a kind of coyness. The 2008 Vanity Fair shoot featuring Cyrus was eerily similar to the one in 2008 with Annie Leibovitz, which featured a 15-year-old Cyrus holding a sheet around her body. Her face with the body of a person implied to have had sex was offensive to the person looking at it.

Privacy Policies and Terms of Use in a Face-to-Face App for Generative AI and its Impact on Sexual, Sexually-Oriented Images

Has the stale selfie that’s served as your profile picture gone a little too long without a refresh? You have probably seen friends use the app to create colorful, custom cartoons of themselves as ethereal fairies or stern astronauts. Back in 2016 the company behind Lensa went to viral with an app that turned photos on a phone into paintings.

Before diving in, make sure you look through the privacy policies and terms of use to understand what the app will do with your data. When our data is being used for something, we have to be aware. This data is very sensitive. We should be extra cautious with how that data is being used,” says David Leslie, a director of ethics and responsible innovation research at The Alan Turing Institute and professor at the Queen Mary University of London.

Although it’s impossible to know exactly how a company is using and storing your data without an independent assessment, this statement is a move in the right direction. With that in mind, however, uploads are only a small part of the larger equation.

While biometrics might be your initial concern, it’s also crucial to understand just how much additional data is automatically collected from your smartphone. Third party data may be used to gather data on you. You can check out section 3 of the privacy policy.

It is against the terms of use to have images of kids or nudity. Even if the app doesn’t generate nudes, women may get hypersexual results because the app adds sexualized features to their images. I, for example, received several fully nude results despite uploading only headshots,” writes WIRED contributor Olivia Snow. The app generated disturbing imagery when Snow uploaded her childhood photos, changing what would have been stylized mementos into dehumanizing imagery. “Since the feature is not designed for minors, we advise against using any images of children,” writes Usoltsev.

It’s not just funky fingers and second heads, you may also receive results that are racist or sexist when you interact with generative AI. “The internet is filled with a lot of images that will push AI image generators toward topics that might not be the most comfortable, whether it’s sexually explicit images or images that might shift people’s AI portraits toward racial caricatures,” says Grant Fergusson, an Equal Justice Works fellow at EPIC.

Those who can afford it may want to consider using smaller artists to create digital pieces for their new phone wallpaper, profile picture or portrait. Instagram and Twitter are full of artists who work in a variety of styles that you could never get from generative AI, and many of them are eager for commissions. A nominal fee is all you can get. You could even ask around at your community art center and support a local artist.