If you haven’t already been swept up by Voilá AI Artist, here’s what the app does and why you might want to be careful using it.
Voilá is a photo manipulation app for iOS and Android that takes a photo of your face and, using some AI magic, turns your photo into something that looks like a Pixar/Disney cartoon character.
That’s pretty much it! There are not many advanced editing features you find in similar apps like FaceApp. You can choose from three different variations once the filter is applied.
How viral apps can hurt your privacy?
Canceling a paid subscription to a viral app (or, better yet, not subscribing in the first place) is the easy part. What’s harder is keeping your data private when you download the new app that’s going viral.
As with many other apps of its kind, Voilá AI Artist gets permission to transfer and store your images—necessary if you want to use the app—which the company says it deletes after 24 to 48 hours, but there’s no way to confirm if that actually happens.
The app also uses your data for targeted advertising, which is unfortunately common. It is important to be aware of how viral apps can be used as data collection schemes.
For example, The 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, began with a Facebook app that paid users to answer a few questions, but then gathered more data than it revealed about users’ friends and family.
It’s up to you to decide what risks you want to take with your money, data, and privacy, but it’s important to be informed about what those risks are.
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