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.
George Kurtz, chief executive officer of Crowdstrike Inc., speaks during the Montgomery Summit in Santa Monica, California, U.S., on Wednesday, March 4, 2020.
Patrick T. Fallon | Bloomberg | Getty Images
CrowdStrike shares fell 7% in extended trading on Tuesday after the security software maker issued a weaker-than-expected revenue forecast.
Here’s how the company did against LSEG consensus:
Earnings per share: 73 cents, adjusted vs. 65 cents expected
Revenue: $1.10 billion vs. $1.10 billion expected
Revenue increased by nearly 20% in the fiscal first quarter, which ended on April 30, according to a statement. The company registered a net loss of $110.2 million, or 44 cents per share, compared with net income of $42.8 million, or 17 cents per share, in the same quarter last year.
Costs rose in sales and marketing as well as in research and development and administration, partly because of a broad software outage last summer.
For the current quarter, CrowdStrike called for 82 cents to 84 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $1.14 billion to $1.15 million in revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG were expecting 81 cents per share and $1.16 billion in revenue.
CrowdStrike bumped up its guidance for full-year earnings but maintained its expectation for revenue. The company now sees $3.44 to $3.56 in adjusted earnings per share, with $4.74 billion to $4.81 billion in revenue. The LSEG consensus was $3.43 per share and $4.77 billion in revenue. The earnings guidance provided in March was $3.33 to $3.45 in adjusted earnings per share.
Also on Tuesday, CrowdStrike said it had earmarked $1 billion for share buybacks.
“Today’s announced share repurchase reflects our confidence in CrowdStrike’s future and unwavering mission of stopping breaches,” CEO George Kurtz said in the statement.
As of Tuesday’s close, the stock was up 43% so far in 2025, while the S&P 500 index had gained less than 2%.
Executives will discuss the results on a conference call with analysts starting at 5 p.m. ET.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks as he visits Lawrence Berkeley National Lab to announce a U.S. supercomputer to be powered by Nvidia’s forthcoming Vera Rubin chips, in Berkeley, California, U.S., May 29, 2025.
Manuel Orbegozo | Reuters
Nvidia passed Microsoft in market cap on Tuesday, once again becoming the most valuable publicly traded company in the world.
Shares of the artificial intelligence chipmaker rose about 3% on Tuesday to $141.40, and the stock has surged nearly 24% in the past month as Nvidia’s growth has persisted even through export control and tariff concerns.
The company now has a $3.45 trillion market cap. Microsoft closed Tuesday with a $3.44 trillion market cap.
Nvidia has been trading places with Apple and Microsoft at the top of the market cap ranks since last June. The last time Nvidia was the most-valuable company was on Jan. 24.
Last week, Nvidia reported 96 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $44.06 billion in sales in its fiscal first quarter. That represented 69% growth from the year-ago period, an incredible growth rate for a company as large as Nvidia.
Nvidia’s growth has been fueled by its AI chips, which are used by companies like OpenAI to develop software like ChatGPT.
Companies including Microsoft, Meta, Google, Amazon, Oracle, and xAI have been purchasing Nvidia’s AI accelerators in massive quantities to build ever-larger clusters of computers for advanced AI work.
Nvidia was founded in 1993 to produce chips for playing 3D games, but in recent years, it has taken off as scientists and researchers found that the same Nvidia chip designs that could render computer graphics were ideal for the kind of parallel processing needed for AI.
An attendee wearing a cow costume while playing Mario Kart World by Nintendo Switch 2 during the Nintendo Switch 2 Experience at the Excel London international exhibition and convention centre in London on April 11, 2025.
Isabel Infantes | Reuters
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Tuesday talked up the capabilities of Nintendo‘s new Switch 2, days before the long-awaited console is set to hit store shelves.
In a video posted by Nintendo, Huang called the chip inside the Switch 2 “unlike anything we’ve built before.”
“It brings together three breakthroughs: The most advanced graphics ever in a mobile device, full hardware ray tracing, high dynamic range for brighter highlights and deeper shadows, and an architecture that supports backward compatibility,” Huang said.
He added that the console has dedicated artificial intelligence processors to “sharpen, animate and enhance gameplay in real time.”
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Huang’s comments come as Nintendo prepares to release the Switch 2 on Thursday. The Switch 2 is Nintendo’s first new console in eight years, and it is expected to be a bigger and faster version of its predecessor. The device costs $449.99.
Huang also paid tribute to the vision of former Nintendo CEO Satoru Iwata, who died before the original Switch was released.
“Switch 2 is more than a new console,” Huang said. “It’s a new chapter worthy of Iwata Son’s vision.”