SNAPCHAT: An Application That Uses Computer Vision

Image: techcrunch.com

Snapchat is a young app startup that has quickly taken over the world of social media. Their very recent update brought a feature called Snapchat Lenses: a feature that can detect and map your facial features and apply live animations on top of it as well as warp your face. This has given the world something completely reckless and share with their friends and family. Some videos made using these lenses has gone viral across other social websites and even on TV channels.

The face recognition technology underlying in this new feature was first created by an iOS app called B2C by Looksery in 2014. Snapchat found the potential of integrating such a technology in their app which has already seen wide adoption all around the world. For Looksery this was the perfect opportunity to bring their face recognition and modification technology to the mainstream.

According to theodysseyonline.com, Looksery focused on creating a program that could alter and transform the look on user's face in real time. They made it with special computer vision programming that could track the movement of users facial expressions and the shape of a user's head. This allowed the users to move their head and have the filter move along with it. It is also possible to recognise two faces and swap each others faces.

Now, this high technology is owned and improved by Snapchat which acquired Looksery for a whopping $150 million, according to Business Insider.

To use Lenses in Snapchat follow the steps below:

1. Go to the Camera screen in Snapchat.
2. Press and hold on a face! Lens options will appear below.
3. Swipe left to select the Lens you want to use.
4. Follow any action prompts that appear, like ‘Raise Your Eyebrows.’
5. Tap the capture button to take a Snap, or press and hold on the capture button to record a video.

Social media apps and websites like Snapchat and Facebook are at the forefront of mass deployment of some areas of Computer Vision technology to mainstream public all over the world. This gives us a solid insight into how our future would look like in years to come given the advancement of such technologies as Computer Vision and it's Facial recognition sub technology.

References:

http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/15/snapchat-looksery/

https://support.snapchat.com/en-US/ca/lenses

http://www.pocket-lint.com/news/135912-snapchat-lenses-how-do-they-work-and-do-they-cost-anything

http://theodysseyonline.com/college-for-creative-studies/people-behind-snapchats-selfie-lenses/395547