'Racist' FaceApp photo filters encouraged users to black up

'They don’t have any positive or negative connotations associated with them'

In April, FaceApp apologised after users discovered its ‘Hot’ filter was in fact just lightening their skin (Twitter/@lucasmtny)

FaceApp has removed a number of racially themed photo filters after being accused of racism.

The app, which uses artificial intelligence to edit pictures, this week launched a number of “ethnicity change filters”.

They claimed to show users what they'd look like if they were Caucasian, Black, Asian or Indian.

FaceApp has attracted fierce criticism for launching the filters, with some users claiming they were racist, and encouraged users to "black up" digitally.

Responding to the backlash, FaceApp founder and CEO, Yaroslav Goncharov, said, “The ethnicity change filters have been designed to be equal in all aspects.

“They don’t have any positive or negative connotations associated with them. They are even represented by the same icon.

“In addition to that, the list of those filters is shuffled for every photo, so each user sees them in a different order.”

The filters have, however, now been removed from the app.

Mr Goncharov declined to comment when the Independent asked why FaceApp decided to remove the filters.

This isn’t the first time the app has courted controversy.

In April, it apologised after users discovered that its ‘Hot’ filter was in fact just lightening their skin.

“We are deeply sorry for this unquestionably serious issue,” FaceApp said at the time. “It is an unfortunate side-effect of the underlying neural network caused by the training set bias, not intended behaviour.

“To mitigate the issue, we have renamed the effect to exclude any positive connotation associated with it. We are also working on the complete fix that should arrive soon.”