Everyone You Know is a Disney Princess - AR is Queen
The Rise of AR Cartoon Filters and What It Means
Over the past weekend, a noticeable trend emerged as many individuals found themselves transformed into animated characters reminiscent of Pixar films. This phenomenon isn't a product of imagination, nor is it an isolated experience.
Snapchat's Cartoon 3D Style Lens and its Impact
Snapchat launched its Cartoon 3D Style Lens on Thursday, utilizing augmented reality (AR) to render users with the aesthetic of characters from animated movies like “Frozen.” The lens has garnered significant engagement, with over 215 million users interacting with it and exceeding 1.7 billion views.
Consequently, TikTok users have also begun sharing videos of themselves reimagined as Disney princesses, leveraging the platform’s AR cartoon effects, despite them being less refined than Snapchat’s offering.
A Recurring Trend: Disney-esque AR Filters
This surge in popularity isn’t an unprecedented event. Back in August 2020, Snapchat experienced its largest month for new installs since May 2019, with 28.5 million new users. This coincided with the release of the Cartoon Face lens, which allowed users to “Disneyfy” their pets, leading to the hashtag #disneydog accumulating 40.9 million views across various platforms.
Snapchat further capitalized on this trend in December with the release of the Cartoon lens, which provided more realistic cartoon renderings of human faces. Throughout the remainder of 2020, Snapchat’s global installs continued to increase month-over-month, reaching 36 million downloads in December, although a slight decline was observed.
App Store Performance and Competition
Following the renewed viral success of the Cartoon Style 3D lens, Snapchat climbed to the No. 6 position on the App Store’s free apps chart, trailing behind TikTok at No. 2. However, Snapchat’s downloads in May totaled 32 million, a decrease from April’s 34 million, while TikTok reported 80.3 million installs in May, an increase from 59.3 million in April.
The Emergence of Voilà AI Artist
A new application has also contributed to this weekend’s cartoon trend, currently holding the No. 1 spot in app store rankings. Voilà AI Artist, released in March, transforms users into cartoon representations of themselves.
Voilà's Rapid Growth
Unlike Snapchat and TikTok’s AR-powered effects, Voilà functions as a photo editor. Users upload a selfie and, after viewing an advertisement (or subscribing for $3 per week for an ad-free experience), receive a cartoonized version of their image.
Initially downloaded only 400 times globally in March 2021, Voilà AI Artist quickly gained traction, surpassing 1 million downloads by May. In the first two weeks of this month alone, the app has been downloaded over 10.5 million times.
Privacy Concerns and Similar Apps
Apps like Voilà are not entirely novel; FaceApp achieved viral status in 2019 with its age-altering filters. However, FaceApp faced scrutiny over privacy concerns, as it uploaded user photos to the cloud for AI-powered editing. The company acknowledged that photos “might” be stored in the cloud for performance reasons, but assured users that “most images” are deleted within 48 hours.
This ambiguous statement raised concerns about the potential implications of sharing personal data. Furthermore, FaceApp previously released a “hotness” filter that lightened users’ skin tones, prompting an apology for its biased AI. Voilà, owned by Wemagine.AI LLP in Canada, has also been criticized for its AI’s eurocentric tendencies.
Data Usage and Terms of Service
Like FaceApp, Voilà requires an internet connection and its terms of service grant the company a broad license to use uploaded content. Specifically, users grant a “non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free” license to host, store, use, display, reproduce, modify, and distribute uploaded and generated content.
While this practice is common among social media platforms like Instagram, it’s crucial to understand the implications of sharing personal images. TikTok recently updated its U.S. privacy policy to state that it “may collect biometric identifiers and biometric information,” including “faceprints and voiceprints,” without providing clear definitions.
The Future of AR and Privacy
The resurgence of Snapchat’s AR lens, coupled with Voilà’s success, underscores our increasing acceptance of face-altering AR technology. Facebook’s Spark AR platform is also introducing new features, and Apple’s RealityKit received a significant update at WWDC.
These trends highlight not only our nostalgia for Disney but also the need to carefully consider the trade-offs between convenience and privacy in the age of AR and AI.
