People Are Using AI To Turn Their Photos Into 90s-Style Yearbook Pictures
Image via Epik / App Store
Wish you could give your high school portraits a do-over? With the magic touch of artificial intelligence, users have been able to virtually travel back in time to meet their teen selves and, now, retake their yearbook photos to their liking.
A new trend taking social media by storm sees folks imagining their present selves in 90s-style school-inspired images. This is made possible by AI photo editing app Epik’s new AI Yearbook feature, which uses AI to blend faces into nostalgic, yearbook-esque studio shots, while styling subjects in time-accurate elements like varsity jackets and high ponytails.
Were you too skinny to be a jock? Maybe you only peaked after high school? Well, here’s your chance to reclaim your prime years, kinda. According to NBC News, the service includes pictures describing subjects to be “Most Likely to Succeed” or “Most Musical.”
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Epik AI Photo Editor, available on the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, is free to download, but you’ll need to fork out anywhere between US$5.99 and US$9.99 to initiate the process to capture your AI Yearbook pictures.
Once you’ve unlocked the feature, you’ll need to submit eight to 12 selfies to familiarize the AI with your facial features. There’s a standard delivery option, which gives you your pictures within no more than 24 hours, and an express mode that sends you the synthesized shots in under two hours.
@epikapp how to get those AI yearbook photos in EPIK 🎒📚🥰 #epikapp #epik #aiyearbook #yearbooktrend #tutorial
♬ baby one more time - kpopvrycs
Epik is an offshoot of popular South Korean camera app Snow, which also recently went viral for its paid in-app feature that let members generate a variety of portraits, including professional headshots, from a handful of selfies.
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Both apps have been tried and tested not only by selfie-taking enthusiasts but also influencers and celebrities like Keke Palmer.
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There’s a trend among Koreans right now with this app called EPIK and a 90’s yearbook generative a.i. feature. Do you think this is really what I looked like in high school? pic.twitter.com/lSIfyxxKv9
— Nick Cho 🥰🫰🽠(@NickCho) September 30, 2023
With AI still being widely unmoderated territory, skeptics question the intention behind such features and the way user data is being handled.
“People paying to train AI [with] their pics… there are serious legal and ethical concerns,” pens writer Franchesca Ramsey. “Folks are passing around fake images to deceive [people] and the tech is getting better [because] of your high school pic trend.”
Epik, however, maintains in a message within the app that selfies are “deleted immediately” from its servers after the AI Yearbook images are generated.
[via NBC News and Fast Company, images via various sources]
