HOUSTON – It starts out harmless... a friend tags you in a story — “Check out my AI action figure!” You laugh, click the link, and five minutes later, you’re feeding your own selfie into the machine to see what you’d look like as a superhero, a cartoon samurai, or a comic book villain.
Welcome to the latest viral AI trend, where your face becomes fan art.
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But before you let your digital doppelgänger leap into cyberspace, some experts are raising eyebrows… and important questions.
“It basically seems like good, clean fun to me,” says Peter Salib, AI expert and UH professor. “People are making kind of silly cartoon images of themselves. Today, it’s action figure versions of themselves. A week or so ago, everyone was uploading photos of themselves and having the AI render it in the style of Studio Ghibli.”
It looks cool — but what’s the catch?
We tested out the trend ourselves, running photos of KPRC 2 staff through popular AI tools — and the results?
Zorrie Jones - Content Gatherer
Gage Goulding - Reporter
Kendall Mayes - Content Gatherer
Honestly, they looked awesome.
But while it looks like innocent fun, Salib says it’s worth pausing before you click “upload.”
“If you put something on the internet, it can be used in various ways. It can be copied. It can [be] pasted, depending on the terms of service that you agree to when you sign up for a service. The company that you upload it to may use it for various things.”
Translation? Once you hit “submit,” your face might live on in ways you didn’t plan, especially if the AI company uses it to help train its model.
What parents should know
The concerns grow when kids are involved. Some parents already avoid posting their children’s faces online — and this trend might be another reason to pause.
“Some parents prefer for their kids not to [have] pictures of their kids publicly available on the internet,” Salib says. “If you’re a parent who’s concerned about that, you might also have the same concerns about uploading your image to an AI image generator.”
He told KPRC 2’s Zorrie Jones that under many terms of service, it’s “totally possible that, say, OpenAI can use that image to train it in the AI, which then could result in somebody in the future being able to prompt the AI to make an image that looks sort of like your kid.”
From action figures to deepfakes
The real risks come into focus when AI tools are misused. Salib brings up the example of someone creating a fake — and possibly harmful — image using a person’s photo.
“You can imagine that someone who doesn’t like you takes your image and uploads it... not [to] turn this into a cute action figure, but... make me a picture of this person committing a crime.”
Those are known as deepfakes, and while rare, the concern is real. Salib says major AI companies are actively trying to prevent this kind of misuse.
“They do a reasonably good job of keeping them from doing it.”
And if something defamatory does surface, there are legal tools available.
We have laws that deal with that,” Salib said. “That would be a defamatory claim... damaging to [someone’s] reputation.”
Bottom line: upload with eyes open 👀
We’re not saying you need to delete your internet presence and move off-grid. (Unless that’s your vibe — no judgment.) But next time you see a fun AI trend pop up on your feed, take a sec to read the fine print.
Because today it’s action figures.
Tomorrow? Who knows.
“Most people sort of don’t care,” Salib said. “Unless you are, for example, a working artist who really wants to keep your own art outside of the training set, it’s probably not a huge concern.”
Still, if you’re cautious about privacy — especially when it comes to kids — this is one trend you might want to watch from the sidelines.
Because, as fun as it is to see yourself in a comic book, even superheroes read the terms and conditions.
5 quick tips before you upload to an AI image generator:
- Read the fine print. Know what rights you’re giving up.
- Think before you upload your images. Your likeness may be reused.
- Avoid using others’ photos without permission. Even if it seems like a joke.
- Don’t upload sensitive or private images.
Remember: Once it’s online, it can live forever.
