FaceApp facial transformations

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Incidents and issues 🔥

• Soon after its launch, FaceApp received considerable criticism for its 'hot' filter, which was supposed to make users more physically attractive, but which whitened skin tones, resulting in accusations that the app was 'racist'. Goncharov apologised for the feature, saying it was due to a flaw in the underlying neural network, which was skewed towards European/Caucasian faces. 

• A few months later, FaceApp introduced a series of 'ethnicity filters', allowing users to become 'black,' 'Asian', 'Caucasian,' or 'Indian.' It quickly withdrew the feature after accusations of racism and stereotyping. In 2019, it was reported that FaceApp was storing users' photos on its servers in Russia rather than on their phones, and that their metadata was being collected. In addition, concerns were raised that FaceApp's privacy policy allowed it to use people’s usernames, names, and likeness for commercial purposes. The reports prompted US senator Chuck Schumer to urge the FBI and Federal Trade Commission to investigate FaceApp, saying it could pose 'national security and privacy risks for millions of US citizens'. In response, the FBI said 'it considers any mobile application or similar product developed in Russia, such as FaceApp, to be a potential counterintelligence threat'. FaceApp CEO Yaroslav Goncharov responded by saying that only the picture chosen by the user is uploaded and stored on cloud computing services provided by Amazon and Google, and that the app did not harvest a user’s mobile photo library.