Image credit: McAfee/Google Play Store
Cross-posted from petapixel.com [by Pesala Bandara]
Some artificially intelligent (AI) photo editing apps that claim to generate selfies were found to be hiding malware that infects a user’s smartphone device.
According to a blog post published by antivirus software company McAfee last month, the popularity of AI photo apps have attracted the attention of cybercriminals.
McAfee’s Mobile Research Team discovered a series of malicious apps on the Google Play app store that were packaged as and functioned just like AI photo editing apps.
However, these AI photo apps actually used malware to steal a user’s personal data and posed a considerable risk to their smartphone device.
According to McAfee, Google had to take steps to remove several malicious Android AI portrait apps from the Play Store. These included the “Pista – Cartoon Photo Effect” and “NewProfilePicture” apps which used malware called FaceStealer.