Lensa App’s ‘Magic Avatar’ Feature Illegally Captures User Facial Geometry, Class Action Claims

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The company behind Lensa faces a proposed class action lawsuit that alleges the mobile app’s “magic avatar” feature unlawfully captures, stores, and profits from users’ biometric data.

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The 27-page lawsuit says that through Lensa’s “magic avatar” feature, app developer Prisma Labs collects, stores, and benefits from scans of facial geometry data gleaned from uploaded selfies without disclosing to users what biometric information is being collected or how long it will be retained, in direct violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.

According to the suit, Lensa’s “magic avatar” feature, which reportedly caused the app to skyrocket in popularity last November and December, requires a user to upload at least eight selfies, which the app then processes to generate an “art-enhanced,” stylized image based on the user’s face that can be posted on social media. In the process of creating the “magic avatars” in styles such as “cosmic,” “anime,” or “fairy princess,” the defendant captures a user’s facial geometry in order to produce the image—but also to “train its neural network algorithms” and thereby improve the app, the case explains.

“All of which, of course, leads to greater revenue and profits for Prisma,” the complaint says.

In its privacy policy, Lensa admits to the collection of users’ photos and videos, gender, subscription details, communications and any information entered into the app, the filing relays. However, “[n]otably absent from this list is any reference to the facial geometry used to create the magic avatars,” the lawsuit contends.

In fact, Prisma’s privacy policy falsely suggests that facial geometry is not captured because the biometric data is “anonymized,” the suit alleges.

“This statement simply cannot be true,” the case argues. “… [T]he user’s identity and facial geometry must be collected in an identifiable way in order for Prisma to deliver its product to the user.”

In later sections, the defendant’s privacy policy contradicts itself as it claims that the company captures “Face Data,” which it defines as a term that includes biometric data gleaned from images—the very thing Prisma denied collecting in previous paragraphs, the complaint charges.

Per the lawsuit, Lensa’s “magic avatar” feature is under fire for more than alleged privacy violations, however. According to the case, the app’s use of an open-source AI model called Stable Diffusion—which was trained on billions of images from websites like Pinterest, Flickr, DeviantArt, Shutterstock, and more—has raised copyright concerns from artists whose original art is posted online.

Further, the app’s capability of creating “highly sexualized images,” even of children, is “particularly worrisome,” as is its potential to be used by anyone for “insidious purposes,” the complaint says.

The lawsuit looks to represent anyone residing in Illinois whose biometric data was collected or obtained by Prisma through the use of the Lensa app or otherwise.

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