Feed: Engadget is a web magazine with obsessive daily coverage of everything new in gadgets and consumer electronics
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Title: Snapchat now has a standalone app for making gen AI augmented reality
effects

Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2025 17:00:36 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/social-media/snapcha...

Snapchat has been experimenting with generative AI-powered augmented reality
lenses in its app for the last couple years. Now, the company is allowing
users to make their own with a new standalone app for making AR effects.

Snap is introducing a new version of its Lens Studio software that allows
anyone to create AR lenses through text prompts and other simple editing
tools, and publish them directly to Snapchat. Up to now, Lens Studio has only
been available as a desktop app meant for developers and AR professionals.
And while the new iOS app and web version aren't nearly as powerful, it
offers a wide range of face-altering and body-morphing effects thanks to
generative AI.

"These are experimental new tools that make it easier than ever to create,
publish, and play with Snapchat Lenses made by you," the company explains in
a blog post. "Now, you can generate your own AI effects, add your dancing
Bitmoji to the fun, and express yourself with Lenses that reflect your mood
or an inside jokeΓÇôwhether youΓÇÖre on the go or near your computer. "

Snap gave me an early look at the Lens Studio iOS app, and I was pleasantly
surprised by how much flexibility it offered. There are AI-powered tools for
transforming your face, body and background via detailed text prompts (the
app also offers suggestions of the kinds of prompts that work well, like
"detailed zombie head with big eyes and nose, lots of details."

There's a bit of a learning curve to figuring out what works well for each
type of effect, and some of the generative AI prompts can take up to 20
minutes to render. But the app also offers dozens of templates that you can
use as a starting point and remix with your own ideas. You can also make
simpler face-altering filters that don't rely as heavily AI but take
advantage of popular Snapchat effects like face cutouts or Bitmoji
animations. (A few examples of my creations are below, both used AI to create
a background I overlaid other effects onto.)

Screenshots via Snap

Snap already has hundreds of thousands of lens creators, some of whom have
been making effects for the app for years. But I can easily see this new,
simpler version of Lens Studio opening the door for many more. There could
also be some upside for creators hoping to take advantage of Snapchat's
monetization programs: the company confirmed that users who publish lenses
from the new app will be eligible to participate in its Lens Creator Rewards
program, which pays creators who make popular AR effects.

A more accessible version of Lens Studio could also help Snap compete with
Meta for AR talent. (Meta shut down Spark AR, its platform that allowed
creators to make AR for Instagram last year.) In addition to Snapchat's in-
app effects, the company is now on its second generation of standalone AR
glasses. More recently, Snap has focused on big-name developers to make
glasses-ready effects, but the company has previously leaned on Lens Creators
to come up with interesting use cases for AR glasses. Those types of
integrations will likely require much more than what's currently available in
the new pared-down version of Lens Studio, but making AR creation more
accessible (with the help of AI) raises some interesting possibilities for
what might one day be possible for the company.

Jim Lanzone, the CEO of EngadgetΓÇÖs parent company Yahoo, joined the board
of directors at Snap on September 12, 2024. No one outside of EngadgetΓÇÖs
editorial team has any say in our coverage of the company.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/social-media/snapcha...
making-gen-ai-augmented-reality-effects-170036214.html?src=rss

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