All the face change apps are a laugh. Can’t knock a good bunny ear, sprinkly star, funny voice, smushy face, weirdo whatever photo-alter app. It’s all in good fun, right? But what exactly are we signing away when we agree to the “terms of use”. Well, if you’re using FaceApp, the oh so popular photo-aging app, you’re signing away A LOT. The terms of use for FaceApp are pretty daunting.
“You grant FaceApp a perpetual, irrevocable, nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide, fully-paid, transferable sub-licensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform and display your User Content and any name, username or likeness provided in connection with your User Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed, without compensation to you. When you post or otherwise share User Content on or through our Services, you understand that your User Content and any associated information (such as your [username], location or profile photo) will be visible to the public.”
We learned from Forbes “To make FaceApp actually work, you have to give it permissions to access your photos – ALL of them. But it also gains access to Siri and Search… Oh, and it has access to refreshing in the background – so even when you are not using it, it is using you.” said Rob La Gesse. La Gesse is the former manager of Rackspace, a managed cloud computing company, so he knows a thing or two about what’s going on here.
Basically, what all this means is that while you own your face you don’t own what you just signed over to FaceApp and the company can do whatever they want with the images you gave them access to… FOREVER. The variety of ways the images can be used could include training AI to recognize faces or even part of an advertising campaign in Russia. Or not, your images could also just stay in the cloud. Either way, it’s good to read the terms of service thoroughly when you download a new app––what if one day they could actually own YOUR FACE?!
