Tech Friday: Photo manipulation is disturbing and creepy #faceapp
Posted By RichC on July 19, 2019
Disturbing and “creepy” (as Katelyn messaged) … although I don’t mind looking a bit younger. 😉 Photoshop in the old days was fun to play around with, but nowadays, video and photo manipulation is beginning to frighten me. Taylor sent me this age-changing photo from our weekend at Put-In-Bay using FaceApp.
Although there is a more serious concern:
FaceApp, the controversial app which uses AI to age user photos, has become the viral story of the month. Yesterday, July 17, there was a highly-charged debate as to whether the app posed a privacy threat, as covered by Thomas Brewster for Forbes. And the answer is fairly simple: “No, FaceApp isn’t taking photos of your face and taking them back to Russia for some nefarious project. At least that’s what current evidence suggests.”
Driven by celebrities, it has been difficult to escape the viral craze of the St. Petersburg app this week. Now, a day later, concerns have apparently shifted from privacy to national security—with the news headlines set to be dominated by the potential legal issues around an app that has now captured more than 150 million faces, after Chuck Schumer, the leading Democratic senator, called on the U.S. FBI and FTC to launch an investigation.
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