Popular Art Generator Lensa AI Sued For Extracting Users’ Faces Without Consent

As artificially-intelligent generators rose to popularity in recent months, one app, in particular, caught the fancy of users worldwide, quickly climbing to the top of the Apple App Store with over a million downloads in just one month.

However, it was soon revealed that Lensa AI—the program developed by Prisma Labs—had been digitally stripping clothes off female users, despite the company’s claims that all images are automatically deleted after a 24-hour period.

Upon requesting the portraits, MIT Technology Review’s Melissa Heikkilä wasn’t greeted with the artsy, creative ones others received. Instead, 16 of her avatars were portrayed as topless, with another 14 in “overtly sexualized” poses.

I tried the viral Lensa AI portrait app, and got lots and lots of nudes. I know AI image generation models are full of sexist and racist biases, but this one really hit home. My latest story for @techreview https://t.co/AA1cyFFnU1

— Melissa Heikkilä (@Melissahei) December 12, 2022

Now, more complaints have come out against Lensa AI, with a group of Illinois residents recently filing a class action lawsuit against the firm, claiming that it broke the state’s law against collecting users’ biometric data.

The lawsuit alleged Prisma Labs has been illegally collecting users’ facial geometry through the application, which attorney Tom Hanson described as being similar to an individual’s fingerprint.

“A person’s facial geometry is like their fingerprint: it is an immutable, unique identifier that deserves the highest degree of protection the law can afford,” explained Hanson, who works at Loevy & Loevy.

The suit charges that Prisma violated BIPA by collecting users’ facial geometry without their permission, using it to train/develop Prisma’s artificial intelligence neural networks, and illegally storing the data. In order to use the “Magic Avatars” feature in the #Lensa app...

— Loevy & Loevy (@LoevyAndLoevy) February 15, 2023

In addition, the suit further said that despite Lensa’s Terms of Use mandating a “no nudes” policy, it continued to generate nudes or explicit images from photographs of headshots or fully-clothed portraits.

Hanson said that the lawsuit was so urgently put forth as Lensa continues to be one of the most downloaded applications in the United States so that users will be protected from the illegal collection of data and have their privacy protected.

“Prisma Labs has been unlawfully collecting users’ biometric data without their consent. This is in violation of Illinois law, and deeply concerning for anyone who believe in data privacy,” he concluded.

🤡 AI pic.twitter.com/Izlrgi4Nq9

— Berit Glanz (@beritmiriam) December 7, 2022

[via Artnet News and Loevy & Loevy, cover image via Lensa AI]