Social networks are booming with the trend of replacing profile pictures with AI faces

The craze of showing off photos created by artificial intelligence (AI) is back again. This is clearly shown when in the past few days, on forums and social networks, many users have changed their avatars to the same shade. It is worth mentioning that these images are all created by artificial intelligence.

The trend of changing profile pictures created by AI is taking social networks by storm. Photo: Trong Dat

According to VietNamNet 's investigation, the profile pictures recently posted by internet users are mainly created by Zalo AI Avatar - an artificial intelligence program developed by Vietnamese people.

This is a mini app that is pre-integrated into the Zalo application. To create an AI avatar, users just need to go to the Zalo application, then find the Zalo AI Avatar suggested at the top of the Diary tab.

Users can then upload a photo containing their face for AI to process. The application requires that the photo must be bright enough, contain only 1 face, and not be obscured.

In the next step, what you need to do is choose the style of the photo. When entering information about gender and age, there are a total of 6 photo styles pre-set by Zalo for users to choose from. AI will then automatically process the face in the original uploaded image to crop and create a complete photo.

Compared to many other AI programs, creating photos on Zalo AI Avatar is quite simple. Photo: Trong Dat

Currently, Zalo AI Avatar only allows each user to create 50 images per day. After successfully creating an image, users will be able to set it as an avatar on Zalo, share it with friends, or save it to their device to post on other social networks.

Sharing with reporters, Ms. Hoai Phuong (Cau Giay, Hanoi) said: “ When I saw many friends and colleagues changing their profile pictures to a new style, I was very curious about what was going on. It turned out that the image was created by AI. After asking how to do it, I also tried it and immediately had an image to "follow the trend" with my friends ."

Seeing many friends simultaneously changing their profile pictures, Mr. Duc Thinh - a mobile user over 60 years old in Hoang Mai (Hanoi) also decided to find a way to have a new avatar for himself.

“ After asking my nephew, I learned that I could create photos right on Zalo. I had heard about creating photos with AI many times before, and I thought it was a far-fetched idea, but I didn’t expect it to be so simple and easy ,” said Mr. Thinh.

Many older people are also getting in on the AI photo-creation craze.

Earlier this year, there were several AI image-generating programs such as Midjourney (developed by David Holz), Dall-E (OpenAI) and Stable Diffusion (by the CompVis group, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich - Germany). Using these AI programs is quite complicated, requiring certain computer skills, so it is not suitable for the crowd.

Compared to the above names, Zalo AI Avatar is much easier to use, just need to perform a few simple operations with Vietnamese instructions without having to download a new application or go to a strange website. That is the reason why this AI program quickly created a trend of AI face-swapping avatars. The avatar photo replacement effect then spread on many social networking platforms.

However, users should also be aware of the data collection of AI applications and photo editing in general. Users should absolutely not upload sensitive images to the app to avoid possible problems.

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