tech

Uh, This Photo-Editing App Now Has Racial Filters

Photo: Mint Images/Getty Images/Mint Images RF

Remember FaceApp? For a brief moment in April, our News Feeds were dominated with photos run through the app, altered to make the subject look like they were either older, younger, a different gender, or smiling in a completely deranged and unnatural way.

The app is back with a new set of filters on Wednesday morning — but this time, as Mic originally reported, they’re “Asian, Black, Caucasian, and Indian.”

Yaroslav Goncharov, FaceApp CEO and creator, defended the update in an email to Mic, writing, “The ethnicity change filters have been designed to be equal in all aspects. They don’t have any positive or negative connotations associated with them. They are even represented by the same icon.”

Goncharov has had to apologize and pull a filter before after facing backlash, something that likely won’t be a one-time incident.

Uh, This Photo-Editing App Now Has Racial Filters