AI yearbook photo trend: How everyone’s going back to the 90s with this app

90s yearbook photos just made an 'epik' comeback.

New Delhi | Updated: October 10, 2023 08:09 AM IST

Here's how you can create your own AI yearbook photos. (Image: Epik)

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You may have seen some old-school pictures of your friends on social media lately. No, they are not digging up their dusty albums from the attic. They are the result of a new AI-powered photo editing app that has taken the internet by storm.

The app is called Epik, and it was developed by a South Korean company. Epik allows its users to create ’90s-style yearbook photos that look like they were taken in the heyday of grunge, hip hop and teen movies. All you need to do is upload eight to 12 selfies of yourself, and the app will generate 60 different portraits for you to choose from. You can also have fun with the various stereotypes that the app offers, such as cheerleaders, basketball players and beauty queens.

Epik is not a free app, though. You have to pay either US$5.99 or US$9.99 to use the AI Yearbook feature, depending on how fast you want to get your photos back. The standard option takes 24 hours, while the express option takes only two hours.

Epik has been topping the charts of both the Apple App Store and Google Play for photo and video apps since it launched the AI Yearbook feature. According to Sensor Tower, a market research company, Epik is estimated to be making around US$250,000 per day from in-app purchases.

However, some critics have raised concerns over the app’s privacy and data security practices, as it is not clear how the app handles the user’s photos and personal information. The app’s disclosure policies are vague and do not provide enough details on how the data is stored, shared or deleted.

Epik is not the first app to use AI to transform selfies into different styles or scenarios. There have been many other apps that have gone viral for creating “magic avatars” or “AI headshots” of users using image-to-image translation techniques. Remember Lensa?

How to use Epik to create yearbook photos

If you want to try out the AI Yearbook trend yourself, here is how you can do it using Epik:

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– Download Epik from the App Store or Google Play
– Open the app and select “Try AI Yearbook”
– Choose your gender and upload eight to 12 selfies of yourself
– Pay for either the standard or express option
– Wait for the app to generate your yearbook photos
– Pick your favourite ones and share them with your friends.

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