In six months, Doublicat, an app for replacing faces on GIFs created by the Ukrainian startup RefaceAI, has been downloaded more than 5 million times, says the company’s investor Sergey Tokarev.

The Ukrainian developers released their app on January 13, 2020. According to Tokarev, Doublicat rapidly gained in popularity from the first days after it got to the market. The investor and the development team believe it happened due to the uniqueness of the proposal.

“There are face replacement apps on the market for a long time. However, almost all of them use CGI technology or 3D modeling. First, it seriously limits a user in choosing images for face replacement. Second, the final image either turns into graphic picture, or its quality becomes much worse,” says Tokarev.

“When developing Doublicat, we have used our own RefaceAI technology based on artificial intelligence. As the result, the app offers an unlimited number of possibilities and a realistic picture.”

In the first three months after the release, the app was downloaded more than a million times. In the following months, the number of downloads exceeded all the expectations of the developers.

“So far, Doublicat has been installed on more than 5 million smartphones worldwide. Now, the daily number of downloads reaches 400,000 – 500,000,” Tokarev shares the statistics.

At the same time, the app created by the Ukrainian developers breaks into the AppStore and GooglePlay TOP charts all over the world. According to the investor, the first breakthrough happened on July 6 when Doublicat outranked TikTok and Privat24 in the Ukrainian AppStore and took the first place in the chart. This situation happened several times over the following weeks.

Today, Doublicat is in the TOP-10 apps in Thailand, Malaysia, Brunei, the Philippines, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan. It is also among the twenty most popular apps in the entertainment section in several European countries. In the American AppStore, Doublicat is ranked 13th in the same section.

Ukrainian celebrities are also interested in the app. Olya Polyakova has posted a Tina Karol video with her face on Instagram, and Jerry Heil has released a music video “Blogger” that was created by using RefaceAI technology.

The previous Ukrainian app Reflect allowed users to change faces in photos. Last year, it caught the attention of Elon Musk, who “switched” his face with Dwayne Johnson on Twitter.

Yeah, I lift a little … pic.twitter.com/UAJdv8qSw1

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 6, 2019

According to Sergey Tokarev, the RefaceAI team is currently working on improving their product, as well as on working with video and creating a technology that will allow to recognize fake photos and videos on the Internet.