Women without makeup Ashot Gabrelyanova. This is an application developed by the son of the founder of the Russian media holding NewsMedia Aram Gabrelyanov. The MakeApp service allows you to remove or add makeup to people in photos and videos. How does the application work, was it appreciated abroad and is it popular in Russia?
The MakeApp application is not the first digital product released by Ashot Gabrelyanov, the former CEO of the LifeNews TV channel. In 2015, Gabrelyanov Jr. went to New York in search of partners for his new project Babo. There, the 28-year-old media manager took up app development. In 2016, his team created the Borsch service, which shows the location of establishments with aesthetically pleasing food, the photos of which are uploaded by the users themselves.
The next development is the Magic program. She creates animated masks and applies them to faces. In April 2017, Magic introduced the function of removing and applying makeup on photos. Subsequently, it became a separate MakeApp service. A couple of weeks ago, it was upgraded: now you can upload not only photos, but also videos there. MakeApp works with a trained neural network. Having downloaded the program in the AppStore or Google Play, the user can upload any images into it, even their own, even if they are not. Then you need to select an option - add or remove makeup. After a couple of seconds, the application displays the processed file.
In a conversation with the journalist of Meduza, Ashot Gabrelyanov said that the program can be useful for girls who want to make a video call without makeup, and for men who want to find out how a woman looks without makeup.
And in his Instagram account, he wrote about the wonders of the application: “Press UnMakeup, there will be no trace of powder, shadows and mascara on your face. Press MakeUp, Conchita Wurst envies you."
But not everyone agrees with the developer. Several Western media outlets, including New York Magazine, Huffington Post and BuzzFeed, have accused the app of sexism. According to journalists, by removing cosmetics from their faces, the service shows women in an unattractive light. In addition, MakeApp was accused of racism - the program allegedly brightens the skin of black women. Revelist magazine called the app a "subtle way to shame" celebrities - now anyone can see them without makeup. The Daily Mail, on the contrary, appreciated the service and even made a selection of stars with and without makeup. Foreign users of social networks also disagree about MakeApp, says professor of political science at the University of Tennessee (USA), expert of the Russian Council on International Affairs, Doctor of Economics Andrei Korobkov
Andrey Korobkov Professor of Political Science at the University of Tennessee “Two-thirds of the negative, one-third of the positive, both from the elite press and from the users. She has been covered by publications such as the Huffington post, the Independent, Britain, and their reactions are contradictory in themselves, and the way they describe the reactions of users. There are positive views, especially among feminists, who say that people should be shown as they are. There are many of them. But still, the majority have a very negative attitude to this and say that this application only enhances the subjectivization of women, that it can remove the image that women themselves want to create for themselves. There are publications that have managed this time to declare that Gabrelyanov's actions are another Russian political intrigue, and that this is the hand of Moscow."
According to media reports, the total number of users of the service is almost one and a half million. We called over a dozen popular Russian instabloggers - none of them had heard of the app. At the request of Business FM, MakeApp was tested by a fashion researcher and editor-in-chief of Fashinograf magazine Tim Ilyasov:
Tim Ilyasov editor-in-chief of Fashinograf magazine “I even managed to send a number of screenshots from this application. Nobody heard anything about him. There is a set of filters with different types of makeup. There are a lot of problems inside the application, starting with the fact that many photos are simply impossible to use, that is, it does not allow them to be photographed. Very limited number of free uses, then paid. There are problems with the camera, because it automatically mirrors the photo, deforms the face. It’s fun, it’s a toy, it’s nothing more than a little thing to have fun with in the evening, filtering your own face.”
In the reviews of the application, Russian users note that the idea of the service is good, but the performance so far leaves much to be desired: the program often freezes, changes facial features, discolours the photo, makes the image cloudy. Some people write that MakeApp only handles a few files for free. I uploaded about ten photographs to the application, and they did not demand money from me for the "experiments". But in portraits without makeup, my eyebrows became noticeably thinner, my complexion changed, and even eyelashes disappeared. When uploading a photo with glasses, the image is distorted. It's funny that when processing the photo of not the face, but the legs, the application "erased" the laces on the sneakers.
It was not possible to get a comment from the creator of the MakeApp application Aram Gabrelyanov Business FM. He refused to talk to the producer of the radio station, reproaching that in our material we give out some false information about his service, but did not explain which ones.
