FaceApp is a face morphing app that has being in existence since the beginning of 2017 but didn’t gain the needed popularity until recently – thanks to a filter feature on the app that exploits artificial intelligence face editor to age or rejuvenate photos of people. FaceApp does not take pictures, it only processes pictures uploaded to the app.
But this quick popularity was accompanied by a lot of negative rumors. Some have said FaceApp sends Data to servers in Russia – since that’s where the app developers are from, others say the app requires full access to picture on a device in order to upload all the available pictures to its server. While some of these rumors are true, others are unfounded.
Facts you need to know
- FaceApp uploads pictures to a foreign server: FaceApp says because AI processing is complex and require computing power that cannot be reached by most smartphones. Cheap and old smartphones do not have coprocessors dedicated to AI – applying these filters would take longer time, hence the need for Data centers.
- FaceApp has rights to the photos that are uploaded, including sharing, publishing and editing them – without recognition of any royalties. It is clearly stated in the ‘user content section’ of its terms of service.
- Pictures are not uploaded to Russian servers. Pictures are actually uploaded to the Amazon AWS. Although, it is clearly stated in its terms of use that your Data can be transferred to any location where they have facilities – which means Data can find its way to Russia.
- According to FaceApp, photos are deleted from its server shortly after processing them.
We can indeed say that there’s nothing too serious about FaceApp. There’s no difference between uploading photos to Facebook & Instagram and uploading to FaceApp.