---
title: Why is this AI app undressing female users without their consent?
description: Lensa has been spitting out hypersexualized images of women and lightening skin tones.
---

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# [Why is this AI app undressing female users without their consent?](https://hs-sbup.thehustle.co/news/12152022-lensa)

 Written by [Sara Friedman](https://hs-sbup.thehustle.co/news/author/sara-friedman) | Dec 15, 2022 8:29:03 AM

If your social feed is currently inundated with stylized portraits, blame [Lensa](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lensa-ai-photo-video-editor/id1436732536).

The [four-year-old](https://www.wsj.com/articles/lensa-ai-avatars-women-11670705062) AI app turns selfies into illustrations, starting at [$3.99](https://techcrunch.com/2022/12/05/lensa-ai-app-store-magic-avatars-artists/) for 50 images. Since introducing the “magic avatars” feature in November, the app has seen 17m+ downloads.

#### **Does everyone like their portraits?**

Def not. Women have noticed a disturbing trend: Even when they upload above-the-shoulder [headshots](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/dec/09/lensa-ai-portraits-misogyny), or ask the app to depict them as [men](https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/12/1064751/the-viral-ai-avatar-app-lensa-undressed-me-without-my-consent/), they get [hypersexualized](https://www.thecut.com/2022/12/ai-avatars-lensa-beauty-boobs.html) — or straight-up pornographic — images in return.

People of color have also reported that the app [altered](https://www.wsj.com/articles/lensa-ai-avatars-women-11670705062) their features, [lightening](https://www.cnn.com/style/article/lensa-ai-app-art-explainer-trnd/index.html) skin tones and eye colors.

Like most problems, humans are ultimately to blame:

- The app uses Stable Diffusion, an AI model that generates images from text.
- Stable Diffusion is built using LAION-5B, an open-source data set that scrapes images from across the internet.

And what does the internet have a lot of? Degrading photos of women.

#### **If AI really is the future…**

… we gotta fix this. Lensa isn’t alone in pulling from the dark corners of the web: Google’s Imagen and OpenAI’s DALL-E use similar [training](https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/12/1064751/the-viral-ai-avatar-app-lensa-undressed-me-without-my-consent/).

That means AI could come preloaded with all the human biases we hoped it would eliminate.

Plus, this isn’t the first time we’ve had to reckon with [sexism](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/6/12/18660353/siri-alexa-sexism-voice-assistants-un-study) in AI. Right, Siri and Alexa?

[View full post](https://hs-sbup.thehustle.co/news/12152022-lensa)

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