The AI Yearbook trend has recently dominated social media, transporting social media users to the ’90s high school’ era, regardless whether they actually went through that era.
This trend utilizes artificial intelligence to transform selfies into vintage yearbook photos, prompting users to imagine how they would have looked in high school back in the ’90s and taking them back in time to the good old days.
The quality of the photos yields amazing results, seamlessly making these shots appear real and evoking a sense of nostalgia, making it fun to reminisce on past memories that users may or may not have. Indeed, it’s fun to see different versions of ourselves in a high school yearbook.
It’s fun and all; however, while this feature has its upside, users need to be cautious due to a potential data privacy issue. As interesting as it may be, concerns have arisen over safety, privacy, and ethics among data experts, with some arguing that the generated images can be used to compile user data.
People might not be able to distinguish if the generated images are real or created through AI, given their “human-like” appearance, raising concerns about potential misuse. it can also affect a person’s psyche as these produce a beautiful “perfect image” that may lead to thinking about the ‘unrealistic’ ideology of beauty.
The popularity of photo apps like Epik has catapulted a discussion on the ethics of creating images with models that have been trained using other people’s original work.
People paying to train AI w their pics is…bad. there are serious legal & ethical concerns. AI plagiarizes from artists & is actively putting ppl out of work.
folks are passing around fake images to deceive ppl & the tech is getting better bc of your high school pic trend https://t.co/1cFNvQ8wPM
— Franchesca Ramsey (@chescaleigh) October 4, 2023
i thought we all agreed that AI “art” is very bad and steals from artists???? so why tf do i see people all over my tl using AI generators and posting their faces as part of an AI yearbook thing??? why are we willingly giving our faces to AI??? is everyone here very stoned???
— 💖 sarah | villanarei 💖 NEW ACCOUNT (@villanareittv) October 3, 2023
https://twitter.com/FAlRYSONG/status/1709698602233180490?s=20
as a photographer that does school portraits as a main job being told about the yearbook AI trend.. I cringed so hard
— little debbie annihilator 🍉 (@butchopossum) October 4, 2023
guys i know that yearbook thing is tempting… but pls dont give your face to ai 🙃
— pau ✮ (@paulinabequiet) October 4, 2023
the scary thing abt that yearbook AI thingy is you are literally feeding your face features to their database 🧍♂️ and you are paying money for it 😳
— cyrill 🐛 (@awkwardbutable) October 4, 2023
The privacy page of Epik, states “At a minimum, we will retain your Personal Information and Sensitive Personal Information for as long as needed to provide you Services, and as necessary to comply with our legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce our agreements.”
The website also noted that “it may maintain some or all of this information in our archives even after it has been removed from the site.”
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