You may have noticed a new trend taking over your Instagram feed. Your friends are turning themselves into digital art with the help of an artificial intelligence-generated app called Lensa.
Lensa AI is currently the top free app in Apple App Store, though you’ll have to pay to use the AI artwork feature.
Lensa first launched as a photo editing tool in 2018, but last month the company released a new feature called “Magic Avatars.” These AI-generated digital self-portraits turn you into works of art in a variety of themes, from pop, to fairy princesses, to anime.
Lensa avatar of Sofia Pitt in iridescent.
Sofia Pitt
You get a 7-day free trial. Subscription fees vary after that, with yearly unlimited access ranging from $14.99 to $49.99. To use the “Magic Avatar” tool, you’ll pay an additional $3.99 for 50 images.
Here’s how to try it for yourself.
How to create digital art with Lensa
There has been a boom in generative AI in recent months with releases like ChatGPT and Dall-E. ChatGPT, which also recently went viral, is an AI chatbot that has a lot of promise. You can ask it to write poems and stories or use it to answer questions. Dall-E, which is created by OpenAI, the same organization as ChatGPT, is an AI-powered text-to-image generator. You type in some words and it creates an image.
Lensa operates using the open-source image generator called Stable Diffusion. Here’s how to get started.
You’ll see a yellow button that says ‘Magic Avatars.’
It’ll warn you that there may be inaccuracies in images, like defects and artifacts, so you have to acknowledge those terms before you continue. Some of these inaccuracies include creating images with multiple heads or limbs. This didn’t happen to me, although I did see some pictures that generated two different eye colors.
Lensa’s “What to Expect” page.
Sofia Pitt
After you click “continue,” you’ll be asked to upload 10 to 20 selfies. The app recommends using close-ups, pictures of adults, a variety of backgrounds and facial expressions. It advises users to avoid group shots, kid pictures, covered faces and nude pictures.
The app says “Photos will be immediately deleted from our servers after the Avatars are ready.”
After selecting 10-20 selfies, you’ll be asked to select your gender.
It’s time to pay. If you’re a subscriber, prices are 51% off, so 50 avatars cost $3.99, 100 pictures cost $5.99 and 200 images cost $7.99.
After 20 minutes or so you’ll be notified that your avatars are ready for viewing and saving. You’ll receive avatars in a variety of different styles like Fantasy, Fairy Princess, Focus, Pop, Stylish, Anime, Light, Kawaii, Iridescent and Cosmic.
Here are some of my results:
Fairy Princess Avatar Lensa.
Sofia Pitt
Lensa stirs privacy and copyright concerns
Artists have accused the company behind the app of stealing artwork from digital creators. Jon Lam, a storyboard artist at Riot Games, explained to NBC News that AI models are trained using other people’s artwork. Worse, Lauryn Ipsum, a graphic designer noted in a Tweet on Dec. 5 that artists’ signatures are still visible, albeit scrambled, on some images. I noticed this, too.
In a Twitter thread on Dec. 6, Prisma Labs tried to address some of those concerns. “The AI learns to recognize the connections between the images and their descriptions, not the artworks,” it said. “This way the model develops operational principles that can be applied to content generation. Hence the outputs can’t be described as exact replicas of any particular artwork.”
Lensa generated avatar appears to show artist’s signature.
Sofia Pitt
Some privacy experts are concerned the Lensa app could keep the photos you upload, even though it says it doesn’t.
“As soon as the avatars are generated, the user’s photos and the associated model are erased permanently from our servers, the company said on Twitter. “And the process would start over again for the next request.”
But any app that collects data from a phone could lift other private data. In Pisma Labs’ terms of service, the company says it doesn’t “require or request any metadata attached to the photos you upload, metadata (including, for example, geotags) may be associated with your photos by default.” Meaning it’s unclear whether or not you’re sharing location or personal data with the app, even if you’re doing so unintentionally.
Prisma Labs, the owner of Lensa did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the privacy and copyright concerns.
Artificial intelligence robot looking at futuristic digital data display.
Yuichiro Chino | Moment | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence is projected to reach $4.8 trillion in market value by 2033, but the technology’s benefits remain highly concentrated, according to the U.N. Trade and Development agency.
In a report released on Thursday, UNCTAD said the AI market cap would roughly equate to the size of Germany’s economy, with the technology offering productivity gains and driving digital transformation.
However, the agency also raised concerns about automation and job displacement, warning that AI could affect 40% of jobs worldwide. On top of that, AI is not inherently inclusive, meaning the economic gains from the tech remain “highly concentrated,” the report added.
“The benefits of AI-driven automation often favour capital over labour, which could widen inequality and reduce the competitive advantage of low-cost labour in developing economies,” it said.
The potential for AI to cause unemployment and inequality is a long-standing concern, with the IMF making similar warnings over a year ago. In January, The World Economic Forum released findings that as many as 41% of employers were planning on downsizing their staff in areas where AI could replicate them.
However, the UNCTAD report also highlights inequalities between nations, with U.N. data showing that 40% of global corporate research and development spending in AI is concentrated among just 100 firms, mainly those in the U.S. and China.
Furthermore, it notes that leading tech giants, such as Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft — companies that stand to benefit from the AI boom — have a market value that rivals the gross domestic product of the entire African continent.
This AI dominance at national and corporate levels threatens to widen those technological divides, leaving many nations at risk of lagging behind, UNCTAD said. It noted that 118 countries — mostly in the Global South — are absent from major AI governance discussions.
UN recommendations
But AI is not just about job replacement, the report said, noting that it can also “create new industries and and empower workers” — provided there is adequate investment in reskilling and upskilling.
But in order for developing nations not to fall behind, they must “have a seat at the table” when it comes to AI regulation and ethical frameworks, it said.
In its report, UNCTAD makes a number of recommendations to the international community for driving inclusive growth. They include an AI public disclosure mechanism, shared AI infrastructure, the use of open-source AI models and initiatives to share AI knowledge and resources.
Open-source generally refers to software in which the source code is made freely available on the web for possible modification and redistribution.
“AI can be a catalyst for progress, innovation, and shared prosperity – but only if countries actively shape its trajectory,” the report concludes.
“Strategic investments, inclusive governance, and international cooperation are key to ensuring that AI benefits all, rather than reinforcing existing divides.”
Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner said Thursday that he’s moving out of the “bomb shelter” with Nvidia and into a position of safety, expecting that the chipmaker is positioned to withstand President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.
“The growth and the demand for GPUs is off the charts,” he told CNBC’s “Fast Money Halftime Report,” referring to Nvidia’s graphics processing units that are powering the artificial intelligence boom. He said investors just need to listen to commentary from OpenAI, Google and Elon Musk.
President Trump announced an expansive and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy in a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday. The plan established a 10% baseline tariff, though many countries like China, Vietnam and Taiwan are subject to steeper rates. The announcement sent stocks tumbling on Thursday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq down more than 5%, headed for its worst day since 2022.
The big reason Nvidia may be better positioned to withstand Trump’s tariff hikes is because semiconductors are on the list of exceptions, which Gerstner called a “wise exception” due to the importance of AI.
Nvidia’s business has exploded since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, and annual revenue has more than doubled in each of the past two fiscal years. After a massive rally, Nvidia’s stock price has dropped by more than 20% this year and was down almost 7% on Thursday.
Gerstner is concerned about the potential of a recession due to the tariffs, but is relatively bullish on Nvidia, and said the “negative impact from tariffs will be much less than in other areas.”
He said it’s key for the U.S. to stay competitive in AI. And while the company’s chips are designed domestically, they’re manufactured in Taiwan “because they can’t be fabricated in the U.S.” Higher tariffs would punish companies like Meta and Microsoft, he said.
“We’re in a global race in AI,” Gerstner said. “We can’t hamper our ability to win that race.”
YouTube on Thursday announced new video creation tools for Shorts, its short-form video feed that competes against TikTok.
The features come at a time when TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is at risk of an effective ban in the U.S. if it’s not sold to an American owner by April 5.
Among the new tools is an updated video editor that allows creators to make precise adjustments and edits, a feature that automatically syncs video cuts to the beat of a song and AI stickers.
The creator tools will become available later this spring, said YouTube, which is owned by Google.
Along with the new features, YouTube last week said it was changing the way view counts are tabulated on Shorts. Under the new guidelines, Shorts views will count the number of times the video is played or replayed with no minimum watch time requirement.
Previously, views were only counted if a video was played for a certain number of seconds. This new tabulation method is similar to how views are counted on TikTok and Meta’s Reels, and will likely inflate view counts.
“We got this feedback from creators that this is what they wanted. It’s a way for them to better understand when their Shorts have been seen,” YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich said in a YouTube video. “It’s useful for creators who post across multiple platforms.”