What the Tech? App of the Day: Reface
Go ahead and admit it, using an app to swap faces with famous people is a lot of fun. Reface is the latest crazy popular face-swapping app that uses artificial intelligence to take someone’s selfie and place it in photos and videos of famous actors, actresses, singers, and other famous people.
It’s been downloaded over 50 million times from the Google Play store alone. My friend Cheryl Huber introduced this app to me over the holidays and it is a hoot. She said she’s spent hours swapping her selfie photo with everyone from Gwen Stefani to the Queen of England.
The app is simple to use. Just take a selfie and choose the person you want to swap faces with. The app suggests taking a selfie in good lighting and without smiling.
There are dozens of choices available at this point and no doubt Reface will be adding new ones. You can create photos, GIFS, videos, or e-cards and share them across social media, by text messaging or email.
Truth be told I had fun seeing myself as Rambo, Justin Bieber, and Harrison Ford. The question though is “is the Reface app safe to use?”
Looking at the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy of the app, Reface does use facial recognition technology or collect any biometric data from the photos you upload to its servers. It does collect information about websites you visit and the type of phone you use along with some other information basically every app collects these days.
It does share information with partners but photos are not saved on its servers. Reface does reserve the right to use your selfie and the photos and videos you create for marketing and advertising campaigns at no compensation to you.
This is pretty standard with any app that you send a photo to. So is it safe to use?
I think it’s just as safe as any of the other apps that use your photo and video but if you’re concerned about how much information you give apps and websites (your digital footprint), this is not an app you would probably download, install and use.
But it is a lot of fun and these days, people wanting to have fun with apps using artificial intelligence, they’re going to be willing to share their photos with app developers.
Reface is free but you have to sit through 30-second to 1-minute advertisements while the app does its magic. You can pay $2.49 for one week to remove the ads or $25 a year. It offers a 3 day free trial for Pro features (no ads) but if you forget to cancel in 2 days, you’ll be charged for a full $25 annual subscription.
