Why is everyone uploading their ‘magic avatar’ to Instagram and how can you do it too?

Has the colorful digitized face of one of your acquaintances appeared in your feed from instagram? Since the beginning of December many users on social networks have begun to experiment with some artificial intelligence applications that can replicate your physical features as a portrait, which has quickly become a digital trend.

The Lensa application is already positioned as the most popular for this purpose, although it only works for those who subscribe. In fact, according to preliminary estimates provided by Sensor Tower, more than 4 million people around the world downloaded the app during the first five days of December. And, in that same period, users spent more than $8 million on the app.

But what are these calls about? magical avatars? The application allows users to upload photos of themselves, pay a value and, in a matter of minutes, download a version of them in all kinds of settings and with fantastic elements.

Step by step: how do you create avatars?

According to the Lensa website, the Magic Avatars feature works on an open source neural network model called Stable Diffusionmade by Stability AI.

A) Yes, the network was trained using a considerable set of data from the internet to generate images from text prompts: Small pieces of text that describe the desired scene in the image to be produced. For example, by default, Stable Diffusion generates the appearance of a random person if the ad mentions the term human in the image.

In the case of magical avatars, customizes the image being requested and retrains itself with 10-20 photos of the user, which means it learns specific characteristics of the appearance of a user with whom it interacts at one point. For that reason, the app asks for permission to “use your content and improve our new and existing products.” Without this custom permission, avatars are impossible.

Finally, as explained by Andrey Usoltsev, CEO and co-founder of Prisma Labs, the company behind Lensa, user photos are removed from their servers as soon as avatars are generated, a fact that would guarantee the privacy of the data of those who dare to upload their information.

In addition to digital security, Another criticism of these digital image generators is the possible impact on the work of artists, although for the moment the application continues to generate lower quality results compared to the techniques or skills that an experienced artist could include in a portrait of their authorship.

Also on TikTok

In the meantime, the TikTok social network is already flooded with filters for the same purpose: it generates a digitized version of the user. To use them, you simply have to open the camera in TikTok, go to the effects gallery at the bottom left of the screen and enter the name of the chosen filter in the search bar. Depending on the filter, the application will tell you what to do to make it work.

Among those options, the AI ​​Manga filter has quickly gone viral thanks to certain influencersamong them Chingu Amigawho recently visited Guayaquil as a guest at Budokan 2022.

Thanks to this function, you will be able to see yourself as a manga or anime character. When the filter appears on the camera, hold the button for a few seconds until the effect is applied to your photoalthough you can also use an existing image if you don’t want to capture a new one.

An avatar that travels through time

AI Time Machine is the new tool that allows users to create hyper-realistic images of a person at different periods throughout history using artificial intelligence imaging technology.

The user can then see himself as an ancient Greek warrior, an Egyptian pharaoh., a medieval knight, a Victorian lady or a hippie from the 60s. The generated photos can be downloaded and shared on social networks. It is available on the MyHeritage site.