How to do the AI yearbook photo trend: viral Epik app creates ’90s-style school photos for TikTok, Instagram

Epik, a South Korean AI-powered photo editing app, has gone viral for launching an ‘AI Yearbook’ tool that allows its users to create ’90s-style photos

Celebrities, influencers and business moguls have jumped on the trend and shared their results, from Korean actress Jung Yu-mi to Hong Kong athlete Vivian Ma

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Celebrities and influencers’ “AI Yearbook” photos (clockwise from top left) Steve Aoki, Raye, Levi Hernandez, Hayley Bui, Katie Thurston and Keke Palmer. The photo tool was created by South Korean app Epik, sparking a viral TikTok and Instagram trend. Photo: Epik

Published: 4:45pm, 6 Oct 2023

Are people on your social media feed suddenly sharing their high school yearbook shots? It’s likely they are not actually real throwback photos – they have been generated with AI.

Epik, a South Korean AI-powered photo editing app, has gone viral for launching an “AI Yearbook” tool that allows its users to create ’90s-style photos – hair, clothes, background and everything – that then-high schoolers would have taken for their yearbooks.

Since the release of this new tool, Epik has reached and stayed at the top of both the Apple App Store’s “Photo & Video” and Google Play’s photography app charts.

“The app has seen a significant spike with the release of the ‘AI Yearbook’ feature,” says a spokeswoman for Snow, the parent company of Epik. “We have witnessed a 30-fold increase in usage since its launch.”

Hong Kong athlete Vivian Ma’s “AI Yearbook” photo. Photo: Instagram / @mawingyuuuuu

AI Yearbook works by inviting users to upload eight to 12 photos of themselves onto Epik. The app processes these photos and delivers 60 AI-generated portraits, each with different hairstyles, outfits and poses set against a backdrop that many ’90s students will remember.