Snapchat's AI Revolution: New Features and Redesign Unveiled

Snapchat's AI upgrade will make you look as old as the features feel

Snapchat's AI experiments are reaching a new level of maturity, as exemplified by the new AI Lens that will let you see how you might look in the future. Aging your appearance is just a taste of the upgraded AI on Snapchat, as the company seemed eager to show off how AI is becoming integrated even more into its platform, including the latest version of the Spectacles. The most notable new feature is "My Selfie," which employs AI and photos of you to produce a digital avatar based on your selfies. You can then ask the social media app to create AI-generated images and place your virtual self in them. It's a lot like the "Imagine" feature from Meta, which also makes an AI-produced version of you to embed in AI-generated images. A bonus of the Snapchat version is that you can generate images of yourself as well as your friends if they have made an AI avatar and opted into the program. If you subscribe to Snapchat+, your real experiences with friends also get an AI upgrade. Snapchat has boosted the Memories feature for all users with collages and videos. But with Snapchat+, you'll also have more AI-produced information in the form of captions and curated Lenses for the old pictures, all adding detail and reworking the images in new ways. AI Lens Life Information is also key to Snapchat's upgraded My AI chatbot, which uses ChatGPT-based models to converse. Snap announced it is improving the chatbot's problem-solving capabilities with visual processing. That means the bot can now interpret images, answer questions about parking rules based on a picture of a sign, identify plants from a photo you take, and even translate text from another language. Like the AI avatar, this feature might also sound familiar if you've used ChatGPT's image features or the Gemini-powered Google Lens. If you're feeling creative but aren't a fan of the Lens that makes you look old, there's a lot of opportunity for you in the new AI-powered tools in Lens Studio. The new Easy Lens tool lets you design a Lens by writing a text prompt that can theoretically do anything you might imagine from a Snapchat filter. For more advanced creators, the GenAI Suite has several new tools, including Body Morph, which produces three-dimensional characters and outfits based on text prompts or uploaded images. There's also the new Animation Blending feature, which combines multiple animation clips to move smoothly. You might also like...

Snapchat is about to get more AI features - Phandroid

Before AI became so mainstream like it is today, Snapchat achieved something similar with its Lenses feature in the app. It allowed users to use augmented reality to transform themselves. But now it looks like the app is about to get even better thanks to a bunch of new AI features that Snapchat just announced. According to Snapchat, the company is introducing new AI Lenses. For example, one of the new Lenses allows users to imagine what they look like when they're old. These age-related filters aren't new, but the use of AI should help it make it look more realistic. Snapchat's use of AI isn't just limited to its Lenses, though. In addition to Lenses, Snapchat is bringing AI to Memories. The AI will help generate collages and video mashups of some of their favorite memories. If you're a Snapchat+ subscriber, the AI can even double up as a creative director to add captions and more. There are also new features called My Selfie that uses the selfies users upload to create AI-generated images. These new features are pretty cool and some of them might even be useful. So if you're a Snapchat user looking for something new to breathe life into the platform, then these new features could be worth checking out.

Snap's new AI feature lets you create Snapchat Lenses by simply describing them | TechCrunch

Snap, Snapchat's parent company, is expanding its suite of AI tools for creators. At this year's Snap Partner Summit in Santa Monica, Snap announced a new feature, Easy Lens, that 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 taps generative AI models to parse what you write and automatically build a Lens using Lens Studio components. Elsewhere in Lens Studio, Snap is rolling out Body Morph, a generative tool for creating 3D characters, costumes, and outfits from a text caption or reference image. An image generator specifically to create icons for Lenses is coming to Lens Studio, as well, plus hundreds of animations for Bitmoji -- the personalized emoji on Snapchat -- that can be stitched together using a new blending feature. In the future, Snap says, it'll add even more generative capabilities to Lens Studio, including a custom animation generator and a tool that'll let creators upload a video of an object to Lens Studio to have the software reconstruct that object as a 3D asset. In a recent memo, Snap CEO Evan Spiegel emphasized that the company, which has invested heavily in generative AI, continues to see the technology as "transformative" to Snap's various properties. In fact, Spiegel contended that generative AI is responsible in large part for driving Snap's creator growth. "Our AI Lenses are already some of the most used Lenses on Snapchat, and our on-devices model will allow us to further scale these experiences with faster generation and lower cost," Spiegel wrote. "This year brings many more opportunities to further improve identity preservation in generative Snaps, enable generative video experiences and help people reinterpret and reimagine their [Snapchat] Memories in new ways." The number of creators publishing Lenses grew to 375,000 as of this month, Snap says, up from 330,000 last November. Meanwhile, the number of Lenses across Snapchat, websites, mobile apps and Snap's AR glasses, Spectacles, climbed from 3.5 million to 4 million over the same period. Snap's under pressure to perform. The company's Q3 earnings came in below market estimates, in large part due to a flagging ad market. (Snap gets nearly all of its revenue from advertising.) In a single day in August, the company lost more than $4.6 billion in market value as its shares plummeted. In the memo, Spiegel said that, in addition to exploring new avenues for generative AI across its products, Snap plans to test several new ad formats to boost advertiser interest and a "simplified" version of the Snapchat app.

Snapchat's My AI chatbot is getting new Google Lens-like features | TechCrunch

At its annual Snap Partner Summit on Tuesday, the Snapchat maker announced a series of new AI features coming to its app. Most notably, the app's My AI chatbot is being updated to work more like Google Lens, as it can now respond to more complex Snaps. You can now snap a picture of a menu in a foreign item and send it to My AI to get an English translation for instance. Plus, you can take a picture of a plant and send it to the chatbot to find out what it's called. You will also be able to snap a picture of a parking sign and send it to the chatbot to quickly understand whether you can park at a specific location. Similar features were first made available to mobile consumers by Google Lens. The launch is another indication that Snapchat is looking to make My AI more of a useful tool, as opposed to just an entertainment feature. A few months ago, Snapchat rolled out the ability for users to set in-app reminders and countdowns through My AI. The new features announced today add more useful functionality to the chatbot, as Snap is trying to get users to open up its social app when they have certain search queries. In addition to the updates to My AI, Snap announced that its "My Selfie" feature will enable AI-powered edits in Memories (saved Snaps) for Snapchat+ premium subscribers. This feature will be used to spruce up your existing Snaps by adding captions and Lenses to Snaps that you have stored in your Memories archive. For instance, if you saved a picture of yourself in your Memories, Snapchat may add a Lens on top of it to reimagine yourself as a Renaissance painting. Plus, you can now opt-in to appear in AI-generated images alongside your friends. For instance, the app may create an AI-generated Snap of you and your friend as lawyers or Olympic swimmers. Snapchat also announced that it's going to launch an AI-powered Lens that will allow users to see what they will look like in the future. The launch appears to be Snapchat's response to TikTok's popular old-age filter. Elsewhere on the app, Snapchat revealed that it's rolling out improved HD video calls and Snap Mail, which lets you leave your friend a Snap if they don't answer your call. The app is also going to start showing local time zones in chats to make it easier for people to know when to connect with friends around the world.

Snap is redesigning Snapchat and adding new AI powers

Snapchat+ subscribers will have a new way to remix their selfies with AI. Since first introducing its generative AI assistant, Snap has been steadily ramping up the amount of AI in its app. Now, the company is adding a new slate of AI-powered features as it begins testing a larger redesign of the app. Snap often brings new AI features to its Snapchat+ subscribers first, and the company is continuing the trend with a new feature called "My Selfie." The feature uses selfies to create AI-generated images of users and their friends (if they also subscribe) in creative poses and situations. The company is also rolling out a new "grandparents lens" that uses AI to imagine what you might look like as a senior citizen. Snapchat+ subscribers will also get access to a new AI feature in memories, which tracks users' previously saved snaps. With the change, Memories will be able to surface photos and videos that have been edited with with AI-generated captions or new AR lens effects. Additionally, Snap is making its chatGPT-powered MyAI assistant more powerful with the ability to "problem solve" based on photo snaps. The company says the assistant will be able to translate restaurant menus, identify plants and understand parking signs. The new AI capabilities arrive as Snap is starting to test a larger redesign of its app that's meant to make Snapchat, long criticized for a confusing interface, simpler and more intuitive. The new design will bring conversations between friends and Stories content into a single view, with Stories at the top of conversations. (Interestingly Snap previously combined users' chats and Stories into a single feed in a previous, widely unpopular redesign in 2018.) The redesign will also eliminate a separate tab for the Snap Map, placing it instead in the "chat" tab. And instead of keeping separate sections for Spotlight and Stories, Snap will combine the two into a single "Watch" feed that will algorithmically recommend content. While the current iteration of Snapchat has five distinct sections, the "simplified" version will have just three, including the camera, which will still be the first screen users see upon launching the app. Snap has struggled with major redesigns in the past and the company says it intends to roll out the new look slowly, with only a small number of users getting the update to start.

Snapchat is getting redesigned, plus new AI lens displays an old-aged you - 9to5Mac

Snap announced a lot of big changes coming to the Snapchat app starting today. There's a major app redesign rolling out, plus new AI features including a lens that shows you an old-aged version of yourself. Today as part of its Snap Partner Summit event, the future of Snapchat was presented. There's a big redesign coming to Snapchat starting today, which will roll out globally over time. The new, simplified Snapchat consolidates different sections of the app. It brings the current five tabs down into just three. The latter tab will feel a lot like a TikTok feed, complete with Stories and Spotlight videos you can navigate through with a downward swipe. Essentially, there's a place to create and publish content, another for communicating with friends, and the final tab is for discovery. This is all well and good, but the news I'm most fascinated by is a fresh AI lens that's launching. Available today in Snapchat, users will find an AI lens that gives you a glimpse into what you'll look like in your old age. This isn't the only new AI feature. Snapchat is also added a heaping dose of AI into Memories for reliving special moments from the past. This feature looks similar to the upcoming Apple Intelligence capabilities in Apple's Photos app. What do you think of the Snapchat announcements? Let us know in the comments.