POV: Snapchat’s AI Dreams, TikTok’s AR House and Meta’s VR Legs

Background:

Our POV this week rounds up a flurry of emerging tech announcements: Gen A and Gen Z favourite Snapchat joins the AI selfie craze with Dreams; TikTok’s Effect House emerges from its year-long beta to amplify AR creativity on the app and Meta’s avatar legs take their first strides for VR beta testers in Quest Home.

Following the release of its My AI chatbot earlier this year, Snapchat is joining the AI selfie craze with the release of a new feature called Dreams. The feature lets users create images of themselves in imagined dreamscapes such as a mermaid in the ocean or as a renaissance era royal. This is the app’s take on the generative AI selfies that have been popularised by one-off apps like Lensa.  

Dreams functionality and Dreams created images will live in a user’s ‘Snap Memories’ camera roll. To create their fantastical images, users will need to upload a few real-life selfies specifically for Dreams, and then Snapchat will display a series of eight themed photo packs for them to choose from. The initial Dreams pack is free, with each extra pack available for $1 as an in-app purchase. Starting today, users in Australia and New Zealand can access Dreams, with availability expanding worldwide in the coming weeks.

This new feature aims to cater to Snap’s dedicated user demographic, particularly young audiences who are willing to pay for in-app features. The success of Snapchat+, with over 4 million subscribers in a year, demonstrates the platform’s central role in users’ interactive experiences and it will hope that Dreams has potential to be a revenue booster.

TikTok’s augmented reality creation studio, ‘Effect House’ is officially out of beta following more than a year of development, giving more creators more tools to build in-app AR effects, such as fantasy worlds, interactive games or AR apparel. TikTok’s AR studio is similar to Snapchat’s Lens Studio and Meta’s Spark AR platform, which have been enabling developers to create AR experiences and effects for their respective app ecosystems for some time.

The launch of Effect House is a response to the growing demand for interactive and immersive content and comes shortly after TikTok’s ‘Effect Creator Reward’ fund was announced. The $6 million fund offers payments to creators based on users’ engagement with their effects.

More than 10 months after they were announced, Meta’s VR Avatars are finally getting legs to make them appear a bit more human. Legs are only available for beta users in Quest Home at present, with a beta approach for new mobile and web version of Horizon Worlds, but the company has advised that all users will start seeing legs on avatars in virtual reality versions of Quest Home and Horizon Worlds over the next few weeks. Users won’t see legs on their own avatar when looking down, they’ll only be visible in third-person or when looking at a virtual mirror.

Meta’s foray into the metaverse takes another step forward with the introduction of legs for VR avatars, which adds a touch of realism to the virtual experience and addresses a long-standing user request.

These updates and additions reflect the fierce competition among tech giants to stay at the forefront of user engagement. By offering innovative features, improving content creation tools and enhancing the overall user experience, Snapchat, TikTok and Meta aim to not only attract creators but also keep their loyal user bases deeply engaged in their respective ecosystems.