What kind of photo should I use for an AI face swap video?

Which photo works best for an AI face swap video?

Updated 2026-11-06 · Remake the Trend

A recent photo with your face turned to the camera, in even daylight, sharp, and with nothing covering your face. Waist up is best for AI scenes; full body is best for dance clips. Everything the video knows about how you look comes from this one picture.

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Why the photo matters so much

The video model has never seen you. It reads your face, hair, skin tone and clothes from one picture and keeps them through 10 seconds of movement. Whatever it can't see, like the side of your face or your hands, it has to guess, and guesses are where faces drift.

What works

Face turned to the camera, or slightly to the side. Both eyes visible.
Even light: daylight from a window, or outside in the shade. No strong shadow across half the face.
Sharp, not a screenshot of a screenshot. A normal phone photo is plenty.
One person in the frame. With a friend, use the trend's two-photo option: one photo each.
Waist up for AI scenes (Snow Globe, Selfie With Santa). Full body for dances, so the legs and outfit come from you.
Your face as it is now: the video looks like the photo, filters and all.

What makes faces come out wrong

In the photo	What happens in the video
Sunglasses, a mask, a hand on the face	The model invents what's behind it; the face changes between frames.
Face in deep shadow or backlit	Skin tone and features drift as the scene's light moves.
Tiny face in a wide shot	Too few pixels to keep the likeness; the result looks like a stranger.
Strong beauty filter	The filtered face is what gets kept, smoothing included.
Several people	The wrong face may be used. Crop to one person.
A child	Refused: we don't make videos of anyone under 18.

Pets

For a dog or cat: the whole animal, eyes open, at its own level rather than from above. Fur colour and markings come from the photo, so a sharp, well-lit one keeps them right.

Test before you pay

Every trend makes a free preview of the first frame from your photo. If the face in it doesn't look like you, the video won't either: try another photo (you can change the preview up to 3 times and make several previews a day).

Sources

The rest of this page comes from the previews and videos we make when we add each trend; we don't have numbers for how often each kind of photo fails.

How we test each trend before adding it
Our photo rules (whose photos are allowed)