It might seem like Lensa AI sprung up over night when suddenly, your friends are all posting artistic renditions of themselves that they generated on the app. But while the Lensa AI app itself has been around since 2018, its viral “magic avatars” feature launched in late November, boosting the app to the #1 spot on the iOS App Store‘s competitive “Photo & Video” charts. For comparison, YouTube is #3 and Instagram is #4 on the charts at the time of publication.
Lensa AI works by inviting users to upload 10-20 photos of themselves. Using the open source Stable Diffusion model, the app processes your photos to generate avatars of you that look like they were created by a digital artist.
When you download Lensa AI, you’re immediately greeted with a pop-up inviting you to join a seven-day f...
