What these companies actually promise
Everyone writes about AI headshots. As far as we can tell, nobody had opened the terms of service. We read three, and the results genuinely surprised us in both directions.
One absence is worth naming across all three. None of them mentions the Illinois biometric law by name, and only one treats face data as a distinct legal category at all. For an American consumer product processing facial images at scale, that is a notable gap in itself.
The clause that matters more than the promises
All three vendors share something that gets no attention at all, and it is the thing that decides what a promise is actually worth.
Every one of the three carries a binding arbitration clause and a class-action waiver. If a company breaks its own retention promise, you do not go to court and you do not join anyone else. You go to arbitration, individually, over a thirty-dollar product.
That is not a theoretical concern. It is exactly what happened to the case everybody cites about this.
Lensa’s Magic Avatars — which required at least eight selfies and returned generated portraits — was the subject of a class action filed in February 2023 in the Northern District of California.
On 8 August 2023 the judge granted the company’s motion to compel arbitration. The users had agreed to it when they signed up.
After that, there is no public record. Arbitration is confidential by design, so nobody outside it knows whether it settled, failed or is still going.
So the case cannot honestly be described as won, lost or pending. It was moved somewhere nobody can see, which is what these clauses are for.
Read the two findings together and you get the real shape of the transaction. The promises in the terms are often better than expected. The mechanism for enforcing them is worse than expected. That is a more useful thing to know than either half on its own.
The part that is not an allegation
There is one detail about that app that gets repeated as a lawsuit claim. It is better sourced than that, and it is the single most relevant fact for anyone about to upload photographs of their face.
In December 2022, journalists testing the app found that it would generate sexualised and nude images from photographs of fully clothed people. A reporter at MIT Technology Review put in ordinary photographs of herself and got back a hundred avatars, of which sixteen were topless and fourteen more were in sexualised clothing she had not asked for. She also reported the effect was worse for images reflecting her Asian heritage. TechCrunch published a similar test the week before.
The application to you is direct. You are being invited to upload ten or fifteen photographs of your face to a generative image system. What comes back is decided by a model, not by the policy on the website, and at least one popular product has demonstrably produced outputs that its own stated policy prohibited.
Why a photograph is not the same as your face
There is a real legal distinction underneath all of this, and it is precise enough to be useful rather than alarming.
Illinois has the only American state law that lets an individual sue directly over this. Under it, a photograph is explicitly excluded from the definition of biometric data. A scan of face geometry is not. So the picture itself is not the issue. What a system extracts from it is.
An AI headshot generator cannot function without performing that extraction. That is the hinge on which every one of these cases turns.
Everywhere else in America, the picture is thinner than it looks. Texas and Washington have biometric laws that only the state can enforce. California’s much-discussed private right of action applies to data breaches, not to a company collecting your face with inadequate consent. So the lawsuits you read about are Illinois lawsuits, and the practices are not Illinois practices.
If you are in Britain
Our research had nothing at all on this, which was a real omission for a site with a lot of British readers. The answer is better than the American one on paper, and slower in practice.
Under UK data protection law, biometric data used to identify a person is a special category requiring a higher standard of protection. The same distinction applies as in Illinois: an ordinary photograph is not automatically in that category, and facial geometry extracted from one for identification purposes is.
Processing it lawfully generally needs explicit consent, which means a clear affirmative act. Consent buried in general terms and conditions does not meet that standard. And you have rights an American outside Illinois simply does not have: access, erasure, objection, and a free complaint to the regulator.
The argument that does not depend on any of this
Everything above is about privacy. The reason not to use an AI headshot is simpler, and it survives every improvement the technology will make.
Alpha Tyler teaches acting at SCAD and was previously a casting director for Tyler Perry Studios. Speaking to a student publication in April 2026, he put it plainly. “I gotta tell you, I don’t like these AI headshots. Casting directors will still see the actor in person, if given an opportunity to audition, so we will know exactly what you look like.”
Notice what that argument does not require. It does not require anybody to detect anything. The generators will get better and the visual tells will go away, and it changes nothing, because the failure happens when you walk through the door rather than when somebody squints at a photograph.
Is it actually against the rules?
No, and that remains the most misunderstood thing about this subject. We rechecked every platform today rather than trusting our own earlier table.
So the position holds and it is worth stating carefully. The absence of a rule is not permission. It reflects how recent all of this is rather than any considered decision that the practice is fine, and the industry conversation has visibly started moving even though nobody’s submission rules have changed yet.
If you are here because you cannot afford a photographer
This is why most people are reading this page, and answering it in a closing line would be a failure of nerve. Here is the whole answer.
The comparison is not what the advertising implies. An AI headshot is not the cheap option. It costs thirty dollars and a set of photographs of your face handed to a company under terms you have not read. A window and a friend cost nothing.
A north-facing window on an overcast day is the best free light there is. Stand facing it, close enough that it fills your face softly, with the room darker behind you.
Phone cameras are genuinely fine now, whatever a vendor tells you. Back the phone up and zoom in rather than holding it close, which keeps your features in proportion.
You need a person, not a timer. The difference between a photograph of a face and a photograph of somebody thinking is the person standing behind the camera.
Are the eyes sharp, and does it look like the person who will walk into the room? That is the entire standard. Not flattering. Accurate.
And there are cheap routes that are still real photography. Photography students building a portfolio, drama school graduates doing the same, skill swaps with another actor, and group sessions that split a studio rate several ways. None of these is as good as an expensive photographer, and all of them clear the bar that matters.
Grading the sources
This page carries legal material, so the standard is higher than usual. Two things in our research were wrong in ways that mattered, and one name on our own existing page could not be verified at all.
One gap we are leaving open honestly. We do not know whether commercial, theatrical or background casting differ on this, because no evidence exists either way and our research had none. Rather than reason our way to a plausible answer, we are telling you we do not know.
Where we differ from the standard account
Do these companies train on your face?
Commonly saidYes, that is the whole business model.
What we foundTwo of the three we read prohibit it in writing. The third authorises it and contradicts its own privacy policy.
What happened to the famous lawsuit?
Commonly saidCited as though it proved something.
What we foundCompelled to arbitration in August 2023. No public record since. It established nothing either way.
Can casting directors tell?
Commonly saidYes, the tells are obvious.
What we foundThey will not be for long, and it does not matter. The failure happens when you walk in, not when they look.
Are AI headshots against the rules?
Commonly saidSurely they must be.
What we foundNo platform or union has a rule. That is a gap in the rules, not a verdict on the practice.
Is Illinois law your protection?
Commonly saidBiometric lawsuits are everywhere.
What we foundOnly Illinois lets you sue directly, and the damages rules were narrowed in 2024.
Are British readers covered?
Commonly saidRarely addressed at all.
What we foundBetter rights on paper and a free complaint route. One flagship case has run four years without a final answer.
Is it the cheap option?
Commonly saidThirty dollars against three hundred for a photographer.
What we foundThirty dollars against nothing. A window and a friend cost less than an AI headshot does.
Do this instead of buying anything. Wait for the next overcast day, stand facing your biggest window, and get somebody to talk to you while they take fifty photographs on a phone held six feet away. One of them will be a headshot. It will look like you, which is the only thing the picture has to do.