The questions that come up most often about age-me.
How long does it take?
About 40 seconds an image. Most of that is not the computation. Encoding the photograph and the instruction into something the model can read takes nearly 20 seconds on its own. The first image after an idle spell is noticeably slower, because the model gets swapped out of video memory and has to be moved back. If somebody else is using it you queue, since one GPU handles one job at a time. The queue position on screen is the real one, not a decorative progress bar.
Do I need an account? Does it cost anything?
No account is needed. There is a free allowance every day, and when it runs out you can open an account, also free. Everything is free at the moment.
Will my photo be used for training?
No. There is no training or fine-tuning step here at all. The model is downloaded and used as it is, and the weights never change. Your photograph is not handed to any third-party AI service either, because the whole thing runs on a GPU in a room at home with no cloud AI API involved. Most comparable services are forwarding your file to an upstream provider, where every leg of the journey has its own retention policy and you only agreed to the first one.
How long are photos kept?
Seven days, after which both your upload and the generated result are deleted.
The result does not look like the person. What now?
Start with a different photograph: front-facing, evenly lit, large face. That is where four out of five problems come from. If the photograph is fine, pull the target age back, because a 40 year gap changes far more than a 10 year one and has far more room to go wrong. The third option is the easiest: run it again. Each run uses a different seed, so the same photograph with the same settings gives slightly different results.
Can I turn an adult into a child?
No. The lowest age you can ask for is 16, and that limit is deliberate.
Does it work with black and white photographs?
Yes, and they stay black and white. The instructions state that a monochrome original is kept monochrome.
Can I use the result commercially?
The result is yours and no rights are claimed over it. You do need to hold the rights to the photograph you uploaded, though. Somebody else's photo, or a copyrighted image, is your responsibility.
Can I upload a photo of somebody else?
Ask them first. This is more than a courtesy: running somebody else's face through an age simulation and then sharing it can infringe their personality rights. Uploads pass an automatic content check, but no check can tell whether the person in the photograph knows about it. That part is on you.
Why can I not ask for an age below 16?
A deliberate limit. Turning an adult face into a child is too easy to misuse, so it is blocked in the code and the tool does not go in that direction.
Why is the expression different from the original?
A known defect. While changing age the model sometimes changes the expression too, and a stern face ends up faintly smiling. The instructions have always asked for the expression to be held, and a harder version of that rule made no difference in testing, so this is what the model does at the current settings rather than a wording problem. Run it again if you hit it.