For some reason, FaceApp has gone viral on social media once more. You know, despite going viral when it first launched in 2017.
In fact, it seems to be so popular right now that the app is currently overloaded and has gone kaput over the last few hours.
When we wrote about FaceApp just yesterday, it was working just fine. And yet sometime last night, it began to glitch out repeatedly. It doesn't matter whether you're trying a photo from your phone gallery, snapping a new pic to use, or using the Celebrity mode to digitally age your favourite stars. None of it seems to be working.?
If you've tried it yourself, you're probably getting the error message saying something went wrong. At the time of writing, that still seems to be the case. It's understandable though.
Remember when Prisma launched in 2016? That was another app that used artificial intelligence. Instead of aging you though, it just let you modify a photo to fit a specific art style. It was great until it got really popular, which is when it also began frequently serving error messages.
That's because of how the processing works. Both FaceApp and Prisma don't download the AI filter code to your phone. Instead your photo is uploaded to their server, where the processing takes place, and is then sent back to you. Of course, at the end of the day they're both singular apps from not-megacorporations. When millions of people are all trying to use them at the same, it can overload their cloud servers.
So now that the app is offline, what do you do? Well, you stop laughing at old you for a while I guess. Or a simple Google search will net you a lot of other AI-powered face-aging options. They're mostly research-based though so not many are as convenient as a FaceApp app.
The FaceApp error currently being served
Or, you could take the time to consider the privacy effects of using an app like this. Remember what I said not two minutes ago about your photo being uploaded for processing? Well, you should know that when you approve permissions and use the app, the privacy policy doesn't specifically address what happens to your photos afterwards.?
Their policy does say they collect data you provide directly like, "user Content (e.g., photos and other materials) that you post through the service." They also promise to not share your data with anyone, except their own group of companies of course, which are not listed. And they can use your data themselves for anything from testing new products to marketing.
So yeah, probably something you want to consider while you wait for FaceApp to come back online.