Snapchat launches new lenses that responds to voice

Snapchat is today launching new lenses that respond to voice commands. Snapchat is rolling out a series of lenses that will animate when users speak simple English world like “hi’’ , “love’, “yes”, “no” and “wow”, as opposed to taking some other action like opening their mouth or raising their eyebrows.

By saying “HI” in the new lens will launch an animation that surrounds you with a flock of chatty birds; “love” will play cheesy Jazz music, “yes” creates a zoom effect. “no” puts you in an infinite photo tunnel, and “wow” puts a bow on your head and surrounds you with the word.

This is the first time the company has created lenses that actually recognise words and then use its understanding of what was said as a marker that kicks off the lens animation.

Snapchat says it will begin to make around five or six of these new lenses available to users within the next week. They’ll appear periodically in the lens carousel along with the others.

Unique lenses have always been one of Snapchat’s biggest differentiators and has continually pushed the bar forward in this area by creating those that take advantage of camera technology and augmented reality in new ways.

The new lenses are also similar to the speech recognition triggered AR stickers found in the Panda Video App.