AI-generated anime selfies propel beauty app to top in Japan

People taking a selfie with Christmas lights in Tokyo. At its peak in recent months, the AI art fascination was generating close to 80,000 tweets per day out of Japan, though the current flow is about a third of that, Toriumi said. — AFP

The ability to turn a user’s selfie into an anime character has turbocharged the Meitu app to the top of Japan’s download rankings over the past week, spurring a big jump in the company’s shares.

Hong Kong-based Meitu Inc is up more than 50% over the past couple of weeks, in which time its app has reached the top of Apple Inc’s free iPhone downloads chart and number 2 on Android’s Google Play in Japan, according to data.ai figures. While not new to the Japanese market, the key novelty in the beauty app was the addition of the option to transform a photo into an anime style with the help of AI.