Snap, Snapchat's parent company, is expanding its range of AI tools for developers.
At this 12 months's Snap Partner Summit in Santa Monica, California, Snap announced a brand new feature: Easy Lens. This feature translates plain English descriptions into Lenses, Snap's brand of augmented reality (AR) objects, 3D effects, characters, and transformations for photos and videos. Available in Snap's developer platform, Lens Studio, Easy Lens uses generative AI models to research your text and robotically create a Lens using Lens Studio components.
Elsewhere in Lens Studio, Snap is introducing Body Morph, a generative tool for creating 3D characters, costumes, and outfits from a text caption or reference image. An image generator specifically for creating icons for lenses can also be coming to Lens Studio, in addition to tons of of animations for Bitmoji – the personalized emoji on Snapchat – that could be stitched together using a brand new mixing feature.
In the long run, Snap says it can add much more generative features to Lens Studio, including a custom animation generator and a tool that enables developers to upload a video of an object to Lens Studio so the software can reconstruct that object as a 3D asset.
In a recent memo Snap CEO Evan Spiegel emphasized that the corporate, which has invested heavily in generative AI, continues to view the technology as “transformative” for Snap's various properties. In fact, Spiegel claimed that generative AI is largely liable for the expansion of Snap's developers.
“Our AI lenses are already amongst probably the most used lenses on Snapchat, and our device model will allow us to further scale these experiences through faster generation and lower costs,” Spiegel wrote. “This 12 months brings many more opportunities to further improve identity preservation in generative Snaps, enable generative video experiences, and help people reinterpret and reinvent their (Snapchat) memories in recent ways.”
The variety of developers releasing Lenses rose to 375,000 this month, in keeping with Snap, in comparison with 330,000 last November. At the identical time, the variety of Lenses on Snapchat, web sites, mobile apps and Snap's AR glasses Spectacles rose from 3.5 million to 4 million over the identical period.
Snap is under pressure to perform. The company's third-quarter earnings were below market estimates, largely as a consequence of a weakening ad market. (Snap gets just about all of its revenue from promoting.) In a single day in August, the corporate lost greater than $4.6 billion in market value as its stock crashed.
In the memo, Spiegel said that along with exploring recent avenues for generative AI in its products, Snap also plans to check several recent ad formats to extend advertiser interest, in addition to a “simplified” version of the Snapchat app.
