A group of Illinois residents has filed a class action lawsuit against the company behind Lensa A.I., saying that the viral app broke the state’s law against collecting biometric information.

The suit, filed yesterday in Northern California district court (and reviewed by Artnet News), alleges that Prisma Labs illegally collected the plaintiffs’ facial geometry data through Lensa, which uses A.I. to create custom cartoon avatars. In doing so, the company violated Illinois’s 2008 Biometric Information and Privacy Act (BIPA), the document argues.

The case comes amid increased public scrutiny around A.I. programs and the digital images on which they’re trained. Lensa, in particular, has faced criticism for allegedly scraping artists’ work online. Some users have also decried the app’s supposed penchant for lightening skin, thinning bodies, and churning out sexualized nudes without users’ consent.

“The plaintiffs in this lawsuit, and millions of others like them, unwittingly provided their facial biometrics to Prisma Labs when they downloaded the Lensa app,” said attorney Tom Hanson in a statement shared by his firm Loevy & Loevy, which represents the group behind the complaint.

“A person’s facial geometry is like their fingerprint,” Hanson went on. “It is an immutable, unique identifier that deserves the highest degree of protection the law can afford.”

Launched back in 2018, Lensa became an online sensation late last year as celebrities, athletes, and seemingly just about everyone else turned their social media profile pictures into one of the app’s signature “Magic Avatars.”

Η συνέχεια εδώ.