The second round of FaceApp

For a few days in 2019 we were all older. Curiosity to know how our appearance will be in a few years led many people to download FaceApp.
The application that edits the images when using artificial intelligence was all the rage for a while and there was no user left who would not apply the aging effect to their portrait. A few days ago, the FaceApp news reappeared when the app allowed people to change the gender of sex in portraits. But in addition to filling the networks with photos of people who were women instead of men or vice versa, the program again received harsh criticism regarding its security, data handling and comments about the expectations that the false images it produces can generate.

See us different

The ability to edit photos on FaceApp has made the application one of the most downloaded in the Google and Apple mobile application stores. After its success in 2019 when it allowed us to age, in 2020 it was time to discover how we would look if we were of the opposite sex. Suddenly all the WhatsApp groups were full of photos of people with the gender changed.
The phenomenon became so viral that the effect was applied to many public figures in politics, sports and entertainment in various countries. However, fun comes at a price, and FaceApp received mixed reviews.
One of the observations that the new Face App function received was that, by only allowing gender change between men and women, it excludes gender diversity in some way. That is, while today many social groups defend the choice of different gender classes, it is not good that the app only offers male or female categories as options.
In addition, specialists pointed out that after applying the filter, the program generates an image that produces false expectations in people of what a sex transformation operation could actually achieve.

An old criticism

When the news about FaceApp and its new tool spread, the voices that point to the application as dangerous in terms of data handling and user privacy returned. The criticism had already been made in 2019 before the first moment of popularity of the program.
Given the doubts surrounding the protection of information in the photo editor, FaceApp updated the bases and terms on privacy policies in June 2020 (days before the new gender change effect went viral).
In the new contract that the user accepts, it is recorded that FaceApp will only upload to the network the images that are specifically selected for editing (before this section did not exist, so the program had access to the entire database of photos of the user), in turn the file chosen for editing is encrypted and remains in a temporary memory, therefore, only the user has access to that altered image, and finally, FaceApp made it clear that it does not use the photographs that are they are loaded for purposes other than their software or shared with any other app or database.
Apart from the changes, new voices denounced that the security of the application is not completely controlled. Among the privacy policies, FaceApp supports the collection of sensitive data on the device through which the app is accessed and a large amount of information on those users who link their Facebook accounts.

The news of the return of FaceApp is important since it sparked several interesting debates around the world of the internet. It leads us to reflect on the curiosity that we all have to see our faces in an altered way (whether we are old or of an opposite sex), it allows us to discuss whether the only available features are really the traditional ones of women and men that the app includes in each image and, finally, arouses again the debate on internet security and the care that we all have to possess as users.