The Lensa app has gone viral in recent weeks, with much excitement over its new AI-driven “magic avatars” feature.
Small problem: It's not exactly magic nor artificial intelligence. Instead, the app is apparently scraping up images of artists without their consent. The image appropriation is so blatant in many cases, the Lensa-generated images even still include the original artist's signature. (See example above.)
I learned this via professional illustrator Lauryn Ipusm, who's been posting examples of this on her Twitter in recent days.
"I think they didn’t think artists would stand up for themselves because we don’t [have] industry labels the way the music industry does," Lauren tells me. She says that, because Stable Diffusion, the AI company which provides Lensa's neural network, is very careful about how the platform samples and trains from recorded music.
"The fact that they do so with their music model shows they are well aware of copyright (I mean it’s a basic concept, anyone who isn’t a little kid is aware of copyright), and that it’s not something that was too complicated to implement."
Lauryn's findings were noted yesterday by NBC News, but so far, Lensa's corporate owner has only offered an incomplete reply:
