Deep Augmented Reality with DeepAR.ai George May 21, 2017 Billion Dollar Apps I wanted to share with you one of the projects that I have been involved with in the last year. It’s called DeepAR.ai. It’s an artificial intelligence startup that is focused on Deep Learning, but specifically with reference to AR, or Augmented Reality. A little over a year ago we launched a fun app called MRRMRR (sounds just like Mirror Mirror). We built an amazing iOS app that took inspiration from Snapchat filters, and then took it to the next level. This wasn’t just about 3D masks and faces, but it was also about special effects and videos filters. We created a novel platform that would allow users to mix and match the effects they were after; you can add different special effects, to different filters and mix then with different masks. Check out some of the effects we were able to achieve below. Our initial vision was to create our own app and build up the user base ~ the initial feedback was amazing: Apple featured us over 120 times in over 50 countries. We racked up hundreds of thousands of downloads. It was pretty awesome. As the app grew in success, we also started to receive numerous enquiries every week from app owners and developers about whether we could provide a similar set of features, masks and effects in their app. Put Snapchat Lenses in Your App While we weren’t so excited about the idea at first, it started to grow in appeal. App owners and developers didn’t want to deal with complex SDKs and face tracking technologies to get these kind of effects into their apps. They wanted something much simpler, something much more robust – something that they could integrate as easily as Stripe into their apps. So we started thinking, and re-architecting, and then building and testing. We recruited some amazing AI engineers to join the awesome team we already had, and together we built a truly worldclass SDK and platform that brings a true deep learning, adaptive form of face tracking and special effects to any app. Right now we are beta testing DeepAR.ai with a few select partners and the results are pretty impressive. Our SDK already supports iOS, Android and HTML5. We’ve been astounded by the feedback from partners and users alike. We believe in a vision where any app can drop in advanced Augmented Reality features in a matter of minutes. We think that is going to be key to driving AR forward at an even faster pace. We’re even working on Studio App and a series of Tutorials so that people can develop their own masks, filters and effects for the platform. If you’re interested in trying out the SDK in your app, then get in touch.
