It's official: time travel is real.
At least digitally.
It's all possible thanks to FaceApp, a new app that has recently taken the world by storm.
After going viral in 2017, and amassing more than 80 million active users, it’s blowing up again thanks to the so-called FaceApp Challenge, in which celebs (and everyone else) have been adding years to their visage with the app’s old-age filter.
The app uses artificial intelligence to create a rendering of what you might look like in a few decades on your iPhone or Android device.
And that's not all. FaceApp can also add a smile to any photo and turn you into another gender using the "male" and "female" options.
The images can look hilariously real, and everyone's getting in on the fun, according to Fox12 Oregon:
The Portland Trail Blazers shared their pictures and Seahawks players did as well.
But it's more than silly photos and old-age filters. FaceApp's fine print might make the app more of a security risk than some think.
Putting your face on display
When you upload your image to FaceApp, where does the picture actually go?
While some may believe their photo stays on their device, this isn't actually the case:
"The pictures that you are taking and processing, that's not happening on the phone itself, it's being sent to a set of servers where that information's being manipulated and processed and then the picture comes back to you," said PKI Solutions President Mark Cooper.
It's not clear why FaceApp uses external servers to alter your photos, since Machine Learning is available on Android and iOS. But FaceApp's goal might be to train the AI in its own computers.
Considering that FaceApp is a Russian app, many were also concerned about the location of these external servers.
Fortunately, hosting records revealed that most of the servers are based in America.
And FaceApp only has access to the photos that you submit. So as far as we know, the app can't poke around on your device. FaceApp founder Yaroslav Goncahrov backs this up:
"We only upload a photo selected by a user for editing. We never transfer any other images from the phone to the cloud. Most images are deleted from our servers within 48 hours from the upload date."
Cause for privacy concern
But Cooper still thinks we should be cautious about using FaceApp:
He says when you send that picture, you might not realize all of the information that goes along with it, like GPS location and even the type of device you're using.
"You're giving them the ability to use your picture in marketing," Cooper said. "Or they may even be using it for other types of commercial so that should be in the terms of service but not everybody reads through there."
Not to mention that access to your image across the internet also opens the door for damaging "deep fakes."
Time traveling and gender-bending photographs are definitely fun.
But experts still want you to consider the risk.
