FaceApp has been giving people the power to change their
facial expressions, looks, and age but at the same time, people have
been giving FaceApp the power to use their pictures and names for any
purpose it wishes, for as long as it desires.
According to Forbes, ‘over 100,000 million people have downloaded the
app from Google Play and FaceApp is now the top-ranked app on the iOS
App Store in 121 countries, according to App Annie. While according to
FaceApp’s terms of service people still own their own “user content”
(read: face), the company owns a never-ending and irrevocable
royalty-free license to do anything they want with it.
The FaceApp terms of use reads;
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.
That may not be dangerous and your likeness may stay on Amazon
servers in America, as Forbes has determined, but they still own a
license to do whatever they want with it. That doesn’t mean the app’s
Russian parent company, Wireless Labs, will offer your face to the FSB,
but it does have consequences, as PhoneArena’s Peter Kostadinov says:
You might end up on a billboard somewhere in Moscow, but your face
will most likely end up training some AI facial-recognition algorithm.