Trending Now: New face app has taken the internet by storm

Trending+Now%3A+New+face+app+has+taken+the+internet+by+storm

Jack Corun, Reporter

For the second time this year, yet another face app has driven the internet crazy. If you are not yet familiar with an image like the one you see above, that means you have not yet been made aware of the most recent face app that has taken the internet by storm: Gradient.

Largely thanks to many influencers and social media personalities spreading the word, it has seemingly been spotted on everybody’s feed recently. The app has also seen its popularity spike thanks to the fact that it has been recognized by celebrities including Jimmy Kimmel, Diplo, and the Kardashians. Its concept is very simple, too: the app matches your face to that of your celebrity look-alike. All you have to do is upload a selfie before the app searches its archive to find a famous face that may bear a resemblance to the face of the uploader.

Once downloaded, users can sign up for a three-day free trial. However, users must also be aware that they will automatically be charged $19.99 per month. Gradient is available for both Android and iOS devices, similarly to FaceApp – another app that launched earlier in the year and became a hit because of how it would take a photo of someone and present an image of what you would look like as an older person.

After it was revealed that FaceApp was created by a group of Russian developers, people began to shy away from it as this was quickly viewed as potentially problematic. The creators of Gradient (Ticket to the Moon, Inc.) remain a mysterious entity, as not much is known about them. As of this week, Gradient has been downloaded over a million times from the Play Store and has an average review rating of 4.3 stars out of 5.

However, not everybody who has tried it was impressed. One Twitter user tweeted Ummm… this app is broken”, after the app said that he looked like Benjamin Franklin. He clearly begged to differ when the app said that Franklin was his celebrity doppelganger. But overall, the reviews of the app have been more positive than negative.