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No, all your friends and favourite celebrities didn’t miraculously reach retirement age — they used FaceApp, a mobile app that uses filters and artificial intelligence to edit photos of people.

While the app has been around since 2017, and previously went viral thanks to features that let you swap genders or make someone smile, this week everyone is sharing photos using the app’s aging filter.

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But, as people obsess over what they might look like in a few decades, privacy experts and developers are concerned about what’s happening to the photos they send today.

“You basically have no personal control relating to who they could share this information with, sell it, et cetera,” said Ann Cavoukian, a privacy expert in residence at Ryerson University.

“Sensitive information like your biometric — your facial image — you want to control that completely. You don’t want it floating around to third parties, without your positive consent. You don’t know how that information will be used.”