In recent weeks, a trend has spread like wildfire in which users generate action figures of themselves using artificial intelligence.
But what’s behind this sudden surge in popularity?
This was the topic of a conversation between Áron Kovács-Nagy and Levente Szabados, Associate Professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management and Senior Consultant at Neuron Solutions.
Why did the action figura trend go viral?
AI-related online trends are not new in themselves. What makes this one stand out is how deeply personal it feels.
Users don’t receive a generic, pre-made template, instead, they can customize the visuals based on their own prompts.
Although the structure of the generated figures is fixed, every result is unique. This combination of real and perceived creativity is a powerful draw.
For many, this is the first time they are truly beginning to discover the creative potential of AI systems.
But what does it say about us that so many people are sharing their own faces for the sake of trend?
This question can be approached from two angles: what’s new about it, and what isn’t.
It’s not new that people share photos of themselves on various social media platforms, this has long been part of digital culture. Uploading one’s portrait to yet another platform isn’t a radical shift by itself.
What is new, or at least now becoming more widely understood, is that these images are data, and someone, whether a company or an algorithm, can do something with that data.
According to Levente Szabados, the issue isn’t necessarily the use of AI applications themselves, but how consciously we treat our personal data. Many people don’t consider it risky to upload a portrait to a well-known platform, after all, we already share large amounts of data with such companies through email, cloud storage, or social media every day.
What data privacy risks are invovled when uploading your own face?
This is both a technical and legal question. From a technical standpoint, any data we share is no longer fully under our control. Once we upload it, it becomes part of another system, and we can’t always trace what happens to it afterward. That fact alone carries inherent risk.
Moreover, we don’t really have effective technical tools to guarantee that these images or data will be used exactly as we intend. Even with privacy policies in place, actual enforcement is another matter entirely.
You can listen to the full conversation by clicking here!it
