Behind the FaceApp magic

New questions arise about privacy breaches, data misuse

The latest app to take social media by storm raises new questions about privacy breaches, data misuse, and the commercial monetisation of social media. FaceApp has a tiny team of 12 people based in St Petersburg. It uses artificial intelligence (AI) to morph portraits. Users upload digital portraits to a cloud, where these are processed to create likenesses of themselves as they will look (or looked) a decade or two later (or earlier). FaceApp also “gender-switches” portraits, and facial expressions, on request.

It is an intriguing business. The AI must not only apply facial recognition techniques to “recognise” faces; it has