FaceApp has gone viral, and we are sure that most of our readers have either posted pictures themselves or are being amused by the pictures that are getting shared all over the social media. FaceApp basically edits your picture to give you a glimpse of how you will look in the future when you are of the old age.
However, in order to get that picture; you allow the FaceApp to have power over your pictures and names for any purpose that it wishes for as long as it desires. Over 100 million have downloaded the app from Google Play, and as of right now, FaceApp is the top-ranked app on the iOS App Store in 121 countries.
According to the terms of service of FaceApp, people still own their ‘user content’, but the company owns a never-ending and irrevocable royalty-free license to do anything that they want with it and in front of whoever they wish. The terms read, ‘You grant FaceApp a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and display your User Content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your User Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed, without compensation to you. When you post or otherwise share User Content on or through our Services, you understand that your User Content and any associated information (such as your [username], location or profile photo) will be visible to the public.’
That might not be dangerous, but the fact remains that the Russian parent company that has created FaceApp, Wireless Labs, does own a license to do whatever they want with it. Peter Kostadinov from PhoneArena says, ‘You might end up on a billboard somewhere in Moscow, but your face will most likely end up training some AI facial-recognition algorithm.’ However, whether that matters to you or not is entirely your decision.
Rob La Gesse, former Rackspace manager, said, ‘To make FaceApp actually work, you have to give it permissions to access your photos – ALL of them. But it also gains access to Siri and Search… Oh, and it has access to refreshing in the background – so even when you are not using it, it is using you.’ Have you tried the app, though? Do let us know!