I Trained an AI Image Generator With My Selfies: Here’s What Happened
If you’re active on Twitter, you probably saw the latest craze: AI-generated profile pictures.
Pieter Levels (levelsio) created a website called AvatarAI.me. The basic idea is that you upload photos of yourself, and AI uses those to create new photos.
He charged $40 per person, and it turned into a wild success, earning $100k+ in the first 10 days.
That’s not 100% profit, because there are expenses to running the AI program and computer power (~$25,000) but it’s still a huge viral success.
After seeing that (and not buying it yet) I saw that AvatarAI.me was built on top of another AI image generator, astria.ai.
Essentially, Pieter is using the backend coding from Astria on his own site. Pieter even said he doesn’t know anything about AI.
Some people accused him of stealing from Astria, but Astria made their API available to the public, giving anyone permission to use their AI engine.
