Face filters and selfie apps are so compelling because they simulate limitless interest in what we look like. Last year ended with images flooding Instagram, Twitter and group chats -- pictures of us, but not exactly. They were products of an app called Lensa AI, which can apply machine-learning tools to scan your selfies and generate portraits of you in a variety of artistic styles. This sort of thing seems to bea semiannual trend: Every few months, an app emerges to collect photos of your face and manipulate your image, reflecting and refracting it back to you anew. There have been tools allowing you to apply virtual makeup to selfies, to apply "art filters" imitating famous paintings, to morph into an animal.