Snapchat quietly acquired Ukraine start-up Looksery in 2015 to— apparently changing the channel’s game for all social video and photograph applications, photo-and-video-sharing platform Snapchat has made another procurement with establishes in the nation, helped to establish by one of Looksery’s originators, to give a major lift to its video capabilities.
The organization has obtained AI Factory, a PC vision startup that Snap had worked with to make Snapchat’s new Cameos selfie-based video highlight, at a cost acceptable to be in the district of $166 million.
According to TechCrunch “…Cameos, launched last month, lets you take a selfie, which is then automatically “animated” and inserted into a short video. The selection of videos, currently around 150, is created by Snap, with the whole concept not unlike the one underpinning “deepfakes” — AI-based videos that look “real” but are actually things that never really happened.”
Deepfake recordings have been around for some time, Snapchat is taking advantage of the innovation in the race for new – fun, carefree – highlights to pull in and keep users happy and hooked onto the app.
It won’t come as a surprise if… Facebook introduces pulls a page out of Snapchats book in 3, 2, 1 to stay competitive as usual.
According to TechCrunch “…Snap had also been an investor in AI Factory. Part of its early interest would have been because of the track record of the talent associated with the start-up: lenses have been a huge success for Snap — 70% of its daily active users play with them, and they not only bring in new users”
It surely is going to create a hype within users to try and experiment with the feature as creatively and excitingly as possible.
There is uncertainty in terms of what AI Factory will be developing whether it’s inserting selfies into any video, or the feature will be tied just to specific videos offered by Snap itself, or whether the videos will extend beyond the timing of a GIF.
Stay Tuned for further updates on the feature!
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Photo Credit: Snapchat via Techcrunch.