You might’ve seen the viral doll trend that’s doing the rounds where you can create a toy version of yourself using AI, complete with accessories that represent your interests, and then share it on social media.

There’s also been the Studio Ghibli trend where you can create personalised images purportedly in the style of the animation house, and before that, the yearbook AI trend. You can even share photos of kids with a view to seeing what they might look like when they’re older.

Reports suggest ChatGPT, owned by Open AI, saw a record number of users this year thanks to the rollout of its image generator, which prompted the tech company’s boss Sam Altman to ask people to “please chill” as its graphics processing units were struggling to keep up with demand.

With such tools gaining huge popularity, experts are cautioning against uploading photos of little ones to them.

In a new reel, Dr Madhumitha Ezhil – who runs The Screenfree Parent Instagram account – opened up about how uploading children’s photos to AI tools “feels harmless”.

But she added that when we do this, we are giving an AI company “our child’s face – to store, to study and to learn from”.

“And now they may be able to accurately predict how a child may look like in future,” she added, “and that’s not just impressive, it’s also very dangerous. Their faces may be used to train facial recognition systems, build eerily realistic deepfakes or even be sold to an unknown third party.”

Dr Ezhil said in her video: “We are the first generation to be raising kids in the age of AI – and it is my personal opinion that it is better to err on the side of caution because once we upload their data, we may never get it back.”

HuffPost UK contacted Open AI about Dr Ezhil’s concerns and they declined to comment.

Is this actually what’s happening?........

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