Blippar's celebrity face-mashing app is filled with pictures of killers, terrorists, and dictators

Business Insider

Left to right: killer Ted Bundy, smuggler Barry Seal, and neo-Nazi Richard Spencer.

A new app from augmented reality startup Blippar lets you superimpose your face onto celebrities like Mariah Carey and Mark Wahlberg - but also inadvertently suggests serial killers, terrorists, and even the artwork of Adolf Hitler.

FaceJam is marketed as a lighthearted way to put your face on a celebrity's, and as a way for Blippar to show off its artificial intelligence software.

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When you open the app on the iPhone, FaceJam displays images of celebrities, paintings, and even currencies across different tabs. You take a selfie and pick a celebrity on which to superimpose your face, with the app then prompting you to share the final image on your social networks.

When Business Insider tested FaceJam, we found murderers such as Ted Bundy, Myra Hindley, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Kaczynski, Edmund Kemper, and "American Ripper" H.H Holmes showing up unprompted on the app's gallery of celebrities, alongside Marilyn Monroe, Robert Downey Jr., and other Hollywood stars.

Finding the murderers didn't require any proactive search, and they were simply displayed openly inside the app.

Business Insider

Left to right: serial killer Ted Kaczynski, serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, and a reporter's face superimposed onto Dahmer.

FaceJam also featured Kim Jong Un, Osama bin Laden, President Kennedy's assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, Saddam Hussein, Bashar al-Assad, neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, and convicted rapist Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh.

There was also an image of Otto Warmbier, the US student who died after a period of captivity in North Korea, the drug smuggler Barry Seal, and the musician XXXTentacion, who was arrested recently for alleged domestic violence.

James Cook/Business Insider

Left to right: Osama bin Laden in FaceJam's gallery, a reporter's face superimposed onto Saddam Hussein.

And there are controversial figures such as OJ Simpson, contrarian alt-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos, Donald Trump's campaign manager Steve Bannon, and Confederate general Robert E. Lee.

Business Insider

Each image was tagged with the person's name, but there was no other warning that the person was anything other than a normal celebrity.

It took less than a minute of scroll through the app's galleries before the images took a darker turn. Neo-Nazis and dictators ranked alongside Meghan Markle and Ed Sheeran.

Further scrolling on the artwork sections showed paintings created by Adolf Hitler.

James Cook/Business Insider

Adolf Hitler's artwork in FaceJam's gallery.

It isn't clear how Blippar sourced its database of images, or whether it moderates what's on that database.

The company told Business Insider: "Blippar implements best practice procedures to monitor and remove offensive content but, like every tech platform around the world, this is an ongoing process. We take this issue seriously and are continuously reviewing the Facejam app for any images that might be considered by some to be inappropriate."