Forget BeReal, this AI selfie app wants you to BeFake

While it may come off as a parody, BeFake is a real app that encourages you to get creative with AI visuals
BeFake is an AI-powered riff on the real-time social media app BeReal
BeFake
Saqib Shah1 September 2023

A new app wants to replace your unfiltered selfies and photo dumps with beautified portraits and sci-fi snapshots.

BeFake AI is the edgy doppelganger of BeReal, the social media app that became a Gen Z obsession during the early days of the pandemic.

The concept is the same: you’re nudged to share images using your front and back phone cameras at certain intervals during the day. Only this time, you can enhance your selfies and photos with AI-powered visuals.

Batman villain the Joker is a popular persona on BeFake
BeFake/gator

Why be yourself when you can transform into an elf or anime character? Instead of sharing another pic in your bedroom, you can swap the backdrop for a global landmark like the Sydney Opera House or the Great Pyramid of Giza. Nobody cares what you’re watching, but they might be wowed when you cosplay as Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones.

Ultimately, it all depends on how creative you get with your instructions. Snap your photos and the app’s AI image generator will begin augmenting them using preset visuals or your custom suggestions.

BeFake uses AI to enhance both your selfie and rear camera photos
BeFake / Davidand

Within seconds, the results will be ready for you to share on a public feed (unless you opt to keep them private or for friends-only) complete with a caption. You can even toggle back and forth between the original and altered image for before and after comparisons.

Unlike other AI selfie apps, BeFake doesn’t require multiple photos to create an image. Behind the scenes, the platform runs on a modded version of Stable Diffusion, a text-to-image AI model popular with AI artists, reports TechCrunch. The system has been customised to account for different kinds of photos like candids, zoomed-in shots, and group pics.

Anime characters like Naruto are also a popular choice on BeFake
BeFake

However, the app has a controversial streak. During a quick test, BeFake offered some problematic suggestions, including visual options such as “Hamas operative”, in reference to the Palestinian militant organisation which has been designated a terrorist group by the UK.

It also offered to turn a selfie into a scene depicting Logan Paul in a suicide forest. In this case, it was citing an infamous incident from 2017 when the YouTuber filmed the corpse of an apparent suicide victim in Japan’s Aokigahara forest.

On the whole, it appears that the app’s fledgling user base is ignoring these wayward suggestions for a bit of harmless posturing. Scrolling through the feed of top posts, you can expect to encounter cyborgs, dragons, odes to The Matrix, ancient gods, loads of wannabe Jokers, and even the odd Snoop Dogg.

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