Stay Off The Cartooning Bandwagon!
Our CEO, Brent recently shared a Facebook post addressing the growing trend of using AI tools to turn personal photos into cartoon-style images. While it may seem fun to see yourself reimagined as a cartoon, we strongly advise against participating in this social media trend.
At ControlAltProtect, we take this issue seriously. When we see friends, family members, or colleagues posting AI-generated cartoon versions of themselves, it raises real security and privacy concerns. We want to highlight the risks associated with this activity so you can make informed decisions.
In Brent’s post, he cautions:
“Please take advice from a data scientist and security investigator. THIS IS SO RISKY!!!! Don’t jump on the bandwagon!!!!”
He also shared this warning for Meta users and other social media participants:
Please stop entering personal information into AI tools for the purpose of making cute cartoons. Your data can and will be used in many ways — including the following:
- Data Scraping: Cybercriminals can collect uploaded images to train malicious AI models or sell the data to third parties. Using an AI model to grab and aggregate all this data essentially puts the puzzle together for nefarious actors.
- Identity Theft & Deepfakes: Facial data can be used to create highly realistic deepfakes for impersonation, potentially leading to identity theft or financial fraud.
- Malware Distribution: Attackers frequently use sponsored ads promoting fake AI generator tools on social platforms to distribute malware that can infect your device when clicked or installed.
- Privacy Loss: Once photos are uploaded, you often lose control over how they are stored, processed, or shared under broad application privacy policies.
When a follower asked Brent, “What if it’s too late? It’s been done,” he offered the following guidance:
Practice Prompt Hygiene
Before submitting prompts or commands to any AI platform, remove names, addresses, client IDs, and proprietary information. Use hypothetical framing (for example, “How would someone handle X?”) to distance requests from real-world specifics.
Disable Data Training
Review the privacy settings of AI tools and opt out of data being used for model training where available. Business-grade tiers often provide stronger data privacy protections.
Limit Your Public Footprint
AI systems and bots scrape publicly available data to build profiles. Set social media accounts to private where possible and consider using personal data removal services to reduce your exposure on data broker sites.
Cloak and Poison
Protect your biometric and stylistic identifiers with tools such as Glaze, Nightshade, or Fawkes. These technologies are designed to obscure personal data from AI systems while remaining invisible to human viewers.
In the long run, participating in AI cartoon trends is simply not worth the risk. If you want a cartoon version of yourself, consider hosting an event and hiring an artist to draw caricatures for you and your guests and have them digitized. It’s a fun, social activity, and a far safer way to enjoy the experience.