This month started off on a high note with Snapchat announcing its speech recognition technology. The company has launched new lenses that would animate as soon as they recognize simple trigger words such as “Hi,” “Wow,” “Love,” “Yes” and “No.”
This May, Snapchat created lenses that identified sounds and produced special effects on the screen when users opened their mouth or raised their eyebrows. This latest move by the company appears to complement that feature well. However, if the new lenses will be combined with the other lens tech that has voice-altering options is yet to be seen.
These new lenses will detect your speech. For example, when you say “hi,” you will be surrounded by chirpy little birds that sing along “hi.” Your head has a bow and the word “wow” are typed all over as soon as you utter the word. You can dance a little to the jazz tunes that the app plays when you say the word “love.”
The previous lenses responded to audio and movements, but this time around, Snapchat created dedicated lenses that can take the voice command, recognize the meaning of the said word and react accordingly. These new effects would be mostly seen in videos on the photo-sharing app as users speak these words at a specific time during the recording. The lenses support still photography too, during, before or after the animation takes place. These AR lenses also suggest the keyword you can speak to get your command registered.
Alternatively, you can use facial expressions like sticking your tongue out, raising your eyebrows and making a pout, while or after speaking the trigger word.
The new feature based on augmented reality and artificial intelligence started rolling out on August 1. However, as Techcrunch reports, the app will see five or six new lenses with speech recognition technology periodically on the Lens carousel within the next week.
Snapchat has grown big on Augmented Reality with its latest launches of custom face filters, Lens Explorer, Snappable Lenses and shoppable AR filters. The app has been upgrading its user experience through expansion of its lens features. Though Instagram recently announced its AR filters, Snapchat’s lenses are as unique as they come. How can we forget World Lenses, rainbow barfing lens, Bitmoji and lenses that change the frame around you, even the colour of the sky?
This is what Snapchat seems to say with its new lenses: “If making facial gestures is not your thing, try the new lens feature and send impressive video recordings to your friends for some unfiltered fun.” But, more than this, the speech recognition feature that works as audio tags will soon come to mark new ways of social interactions, e-commerce, and digital marketing.
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