While some may think that Snapchat is on the decline, the app continues to attract a significant number of active users.
Snap CEO Evan Spiegel acknowledged past shortcomings in its use of machine learning and announced an aggressive new strategy to integrate AI and machine learning techniques into its services, marking a major shift from a long-standing focus on overhauling its advertising approach.
In an interview BloombergSpiegel stressed that machine learning capabilities needed to improve to reach state-of-the-art standards: “We needed to get better at that, and we needed to bring together some of the most experienced people in machine learning to talk about how do we get to the state-of-the-art and actually invest in it,” he said.
Soon after, Snap unveiled its latest generative AI technology, which will allow it to create more realistic lenses (the app's feature that lets you turn into a dog or have giant bug eyes) when you take videos or photos with your phone camera. Snapchat hopes the change will help it compete more effectively with other social media platforms.
Snap is a pioneer of augmented reality, a technology that overlays digital effects onto real-world images and videos. Though it remains in the shadow of bigger rivals like Meta, Snap is betting big on sleeker and, frankly, more fun AR lenses that the company hopes will attract new users and advertisers to its Snapchat platform.
The company also announced that AR developers will now be able to create AI-powered lenses that Snapchatters can use more broadly in their content. Snap also unveiled a new version of its developer program, Lens Studio. Introduced late last year, a more advanced version of the software initially allowed creators to build their own AR experiences for Snapchat; now, that's been extended to websites and other apps.
Snap CTO Bobby Murphy said the improvements to Lens Studio will dramatically reduce the time it takes to create AR effects from weeks to minutes or hours, while also making it easier to develop more sophisticated creations. “What's exciting for us is that these tools not only expand the creative space people can work in, but they're also so easy to use that even beginners can create something unique very quickly,” Murphy explained in an interview. Reuters.
The new Lens Studio includes a suite of generative AI tools, including an AI assistant that can answer developers' questions. Another tool allows artists to input prompts and automatically generates 3D images that can be used for AR lenses, eliminating the need to develop 3D models from scratch.
Early AR tech only allowed you to do simple tasks like putting a hat on someone's head in a video, but Murphy says Snap's improvements will make the hat move seamlessly with the person's movements, and the lighting on the hat will match the video perfectly, making it hard to tell if the digital hat is actually being worn.
Snap is also planning to develop AR lenses that cover not only the face but also everything from head to toe. Murphy said that it is very difficult to create a new wardrobe for individuals right now. Snap plans to provide advanced AR experiences through AI generation functions to differentiate Snapchat from other services and attract new users, but it may be difficult to acquire users in proportion to its size compared to major companies like Meta.
Read also: NVIDIA unveils latest advances in visual AI
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