Holding the number-one position
The app has landed the top spot on the Apple App Store. It should also be considered that App Store has competitive ‘Photo & Video” charts. If we were to compare, YouTube is in third and Instagram is in the fourth position on the App Store currently.
Details about the app and its features
Lensa AI requests users to upload 10-20 photographs of themselves. Then it would use the open-source Stable Diffusion model to process those images to generate your avatars. They would look as if they are made by digital artists. Such is the precision. When you download the app, you would be asked to join a 7-day free trial to use the AI editing tools. You would be charged $ 39.99 for unlimited use for a year if you forget to or do not cancel the subscription or trial in time. You may choose not to opt for the trial at all and just use the free version. However, there are limited things to do there. Moreover, it does not have the viral ‘magic avatars’ feature either. In case, you still want to make your own ‘magic avatar’, you would be asked to pay $3.99 to get 50 unique avatars. There would be five variations of 10 different styles.
Expert’s opinions
The app analytics firm, Sensor Tower, says that Lensa AI has been downloaded 22.2 million times worldwide and earned $ 29 million from consumer spending since 2018. The app has enjoyed a significant spike after the release of ‘magic avatars’. It has been downloaded 1.6 million times since late November which is a 631% increase from downloads in October which was 219,000 times. While the USA is the largest market since it is generating 58% of consumer spending but right now the app is particularly popular in Brazil. 31% of downloads were from Brazil as per statistics. The fact that viral photo editing apps always have had a shady history should not be discounted. Some such apps have been found the sanctum for malware. Suggested read: How Can Artificial Intelligence Shape the Future of Photo Editing?
Issues with photo editing apps
Some other apps made the users worried with the thoughts of what would happen to their photos uploaded on the app. This was a concern when the Russia-based FaceApp AI editor said that they might store the photos in the cloud for “performance and traffic reasons”. However, most images would be deleted within 48 hours.
Company speaks
Thankfully, Prisma Lab which developed Lensa AI told TechCrunch that it employs AWS cloud services to process the images. The images are deleted immediately as soon as the AI model is trained on the photos of the user.
