What does the Lensa AI app do with my self portraits and why has it gone viral?

So there's this app called Lensa, which was launched as a photo editing app back in 2018, by Prisma Labs. But it only went viral recently for its new AI-generated "magic avatars" feature. Users, provided they upload 10-20 selfies, can pay a small sum to receive digital portraits of themselves morphed into a range of kooky styles from "anime" to "fairy princess". It's one of those trends that launched to meteoritic popularity really fast – it's now the most downloaded photo and video app on the iOS store. Sending pictures of yourself off into the ether to get sent back more pictures of yourself seems a bit weird to me, but I am over 30.