Forget the 10 year old challenge and the Fresh Daddy challenge; there is a new challenge in town that has driven our local celebrities and a cross section of Ugandans into excitement ,on social media, although some have regretted why they jumped on the bandwagon.
FaceApp, is a mobile application that generates highly realistic transformations of a face to make it smile, look younger, look older, or even change gender. The free app uses artificial intelligence to dramatically alter selfies, in a similar manner to Prisma and Meitu.
The app first went viral for transforming people’s gender and no celeb was left behind. This time round, celebs have jumped on the bandwagon for the trendy app with its age transforming feature which brings out realistic images of how the person will look like in their old age.
However, regret has been sparked by complaints from users about what happens after these photos are edited and the app’s ‘Hot’ filter making them look more European by whitening their skin, which they say is racist.
If you have used this APP, Remember that part when you clicked okay when it asked for permission to access your phone gallery? That’s where you left most of your powers over pictures the app can access.
According to Forbes, the viral smartphone application of Russian origin FaceApp owned 150 million of our faces as Wednesday afternoon thanks to the #FaceAppChallenge.
Amidst these fears however, FaceApp , however told CNBC on Wednesday that it only uploads the photo selected for editing and that it does not upload any other images in your library. It said most images are deleted from its servers within 48 hours. It also said that while the company’s R&D team is located in Russia, it doesn’t transfer user data to Russia.
On the issue of racism, much as the founder has apologized, this isn’t the first time a technology company has been embroiled in a race storm over filters. Meitu, which was found to be collecting huge amounts of users’ personal data earlier this year, was also criticised for whitening users’ skin.
Snapchat too caused outrage last year with its “blackface” Bob Marley filter and “yellowface” filter.
