I couldn't afford a $300 headshot, so I built this

Appreciate the feedback — I’m mostly sharing a different angle, not disagreeing.

Many people can absolutely get a great headshot with a smartphone, and $300 is definitely on the high end, not the norm. I mentioned it mainly as an example of what I personally ran into, rather than a claim about average cost.

For me, the bigger motivation was avoiding the logistics and friction — lighting, backgrounds, retakes, and decision fatigue — especially when all I needed was one usable result.

That’s also why this is intentionally narrow in scope: predefined styles and outputs instead of open-ended prompting. For things like ID photos or short self-introduction videos, I’ve found some users prefer picking from a fixed set (e.g. Korean-style ID photos, US campus-style portraits) rather than starting from a blank prompt.

It’s not meant to replace ChatGPT, but to serve people who want a very specific outcome with minimal effort.

totally fair point — I actually agree with you. Privacy was one of my biggest concerns when building this.Right now, the trade-off I made was accessibility vs. local-only setup. Running the models locally still requires a fairly heavy setup (GPU, memory, model weights), which would block most non-technical users. A local / self-hosted version is something I’ve seriously considered, especially for developers and privacy-sensitive users. If there’s enough demand, that’s definitely a direction I’d like to explore. Really appreciate you calling this out — it’s a very reasonable concern. Thanks for the thoughtful feedback — really appreciate it.If you’re curious, feel free to give ai-headshot-generator.art a try.I’ve also added a 50% off code: SRLEILCR as a small thank-you

It’s on the high end, not the norm. I mentioned it mainly as an example of what I personally ran into.Out of curiosity, what’s the typical range you’ve seen where you’re based?