Snapchat Launches AR Lens Avatar, Shows How Humans Are In The Metaverse

JAKARTA - Snapchat once again shows how its application enters the world of the metaverse. The company recently launched the Avatar lens AR, which makes users look like The Sims characters.

These AR lenses don't really stand out, though, as Snapchat peppers them with augmented reality, but they're a continuation of the trend for years, and will likely resurface on TikTok as well as viral content.

Using this lens is quite easy, open the camera in the Snapchat app to scan the QR code on the Snapchat website, then see how smooth the user's skin is in the metaverse, where freckles and pimples don't show up at all.

Earlier in August 2020, Snapchat released the Cartoon Face lens, which users realized could be used for Disneyfy, their pets and the hashtag #disneydog rolled into TikTok which garnered 40.9 million views.

Then Snapchat went viral again in December when it released Cartoon lenses, which render more realistic results for human faces than ever before.

Cited from TechCrunch, Friday, December 24, it's worth noting, this app continues to make slightly better versions of the trend, and eventually it goes viral as well. In June this year, the Disney-like trend reappeared with the Cartoon Style 3-D lens, which racked up 2.8 billion views in the first week after its release.

Now comes the Avatar lenses, which also make clothes look like cartoons, not just faces. Earlier this month, Snapchat hosted the Lens Fest, a celebration of the app's AR technology.

The company announced at the event that there are more than 250.000 lens makers from more than 200 countries. Combined, they have made 2.5 million lenses that have been viewed more than 3.5 trillion times. Meanwhile, Snapchat's TikTok-like app Spotlight gave 12.000 creators a total of 250 million US dollars for their uploads.

Snapchat says that more than 65 percent of Spotlight posts use one of Snapchat's creative tools or lenses. Companies like Niantic and Snapchat think that augmented reality is a better fit for building a metaverse than virtual reality. But even for tech giants who love headsets like Meta, AR can help make humans really look like themselves in the metaverse.