If you’ve been on any social medium in the last few days then you can’t have failed to notice it FaceApp is everywhere.
Despite launching way back in January 2017, the app has suddenly received a new lease of viral life.
But as quickly as it has appeared, the worries about what the company is actually doing with our photos and our privacy have followed too. So, is it time to worry?
What is FaceApp?
FaceApp is the hot new trend. It’s an iPhone and Android app that takes your photos and performs some digitally changes to manipulate your face through a number of clever filters.
The old age filter has become particularly popular because it is available for use in the app for free. It’s pretty good too, and is able to produce highly convincing results.
How does FaceApp work?
The app works by using the power of machine learning. This is a new technique that is increasingly ubiquitous in computing.
Essentially, rather than try to explain to a computer what it means to age and describe using code what a wrinkle, grey hair or Werther’s Originals are the computer will figure them out for itself by being “trained” with thousands of other photos of old people.
The results are pretty impressive if not entirely accurate. Run a photo of someone who is old now from when they were young, and FaceApp will more than likely produce an image which looks exactly like them now.
What data does FaceApp collect?
As quickly as the app has gone viral, so have the privacy worries. So much so that US Senator Chuck Schumer has called for the FBI to investigate the app.
The worry seems to hinge on the fact that in order for the app to work, the user must grant the app access to the photos on your phone just like you have to with Instagram or a billion other apps.
What’s amplifying this worry is that the company that makes the app, Wireless Lab, is based in St Petersburg, Russia.
Despite the initial worries, at the moment the evidence suggests that the app is behaving responsibly and not uploading all of our photos. Several other developers have analysed what is being transmitted, and have concluded that all the app is uploading are the photos that the user chooses to apply filters to.
The developers have said that everything that is uploaded is deleted within a couple of days. The reason it hangs on to the data for that long in the first place is apparently to avoid having to process the same images twice.
Ultimately, with FaceApp we’re making the same privacy trade-offs and considerations we make with any other app. When we download Instagram, should we worry that the US government might want to have a flick through our photo albums? Perhaps we might assume there are more safeguards there because America is a functioning democracy.
