‘Replace My Ex’ Shows a Lighter Side of AI Photo Editing

Replace My Ex

Since Picsart’s AI Replace can be used to replace people or objects in a photo with pretty much anything, the company showcased a rather lighthearted example of this technology in action: “replace my ex.”

While there are certainly many reasons to have concerns with artificial intelligence (AI), Picsart shared a series of examples that show users can choose to replace photos that immortalize a failed relationship with something else.

“We’ve all been there: you have a photo where you look super cute, but it’s tainted by the presence of someone no longer in your life,” the company writes on its blog, which was spotted by CreativeBloq. “You’d rather not see or think about them, but don’t necessarily want to delete the hundreds (or even thousands) of photos you have together.”

Picsart then proceeds to show that its AI Replace software is able to replace people — be it an ex-boyfriend, ex-girlfriend, or just an ex-friend — with any number of things like a dog, a snake, or a rather on-the-nose red flag.

Replace My Ex
Who’s the snake now?
Replace My Ex
Carbs >>>>> Everything
Replace My Ex
The most loyal partner.

Picsart’s AI Replace was first introduced in December of last year and builds on its generative AI tools that it added to its app the month prior. AI Replace takes a selected part of an image and replaces it with something entirely new that is chosen by the user.

While many of Picsart’s features are free to use, both AI Replace and the AI Background tool — which gives an editor the ability to replace the background of a photo with another AI-generated scene — are reserved for Gold subscribers. At the time of publication, AI Replace was only available on iOS devices, although the company says that Android support is coming “soon.”

Generative AI, or AI image generators as they are more colloquially known, come with a lot of baggage. They have become incredibly popular since their foray into the public last year and have already see-sawed between being banned by stock photography websites to being integrated into them like is the case with Shutterstock. Artists have rightly question how the technology is infringing on copyrights. Just this week, a research team proved that AI image generators are capable of exactly replicating a copyrighted photo.


Image credits: Picsart

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