Tech

Snapchat buys Looksery, a 2-year-old startup that lets you Photoshop your face while you video chat

By Alyson Shontell
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looksery
Looksery's app. Snapchat now offers that same selfie filter as a lens.  Looksery

Snapchat has acquired facial recognition startup Looksery. 

The deal was first flagged by Ain.ua, a Ukrainian publication, which states Snapchat purchased the startup for ~ $150 million. Business Insider has independently confirmed the acquisition.

Looksery
How Looksery's filters can make you look in live video chats.  Kickstarter/Looksery

Looksery is based in San Francisco and it doesn’t appear to have raised traditional outside capital. It was started by a Ukrainian team and its CEO is Victor Shaburov. The two year old startup uses facial recognition technology to essentially photoshop video chats and messages in real time. Looksery launched with a Kickstarter campaign in June 2014 and six face filters. Users can add filters to their faces that make them look older, or like zombies. They can also make themselves look more attractive, with slimmer cheeks, smoother skim, bluer eyes, etc. It reportedly has about 3 million downloads. Here's more on how Looksery works. 

Snapchat may be using the technology already in its new “Lenses” feature which launched Tuesday. Lenses lets people add filters to their selfies so they become animated before they send snaps.

snapchat lenses
Lenses you can use on Snapchat when your camera is in selfie mode.  Snapchat

Here's how Snapchat Lenses (examples below) work.

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Alyson Shontell Business Insider
Alyson Shontell
Alyson is the Editor-in-Chief and CCO at Fortune.  She was previously a co Editor-in-Chief overseeing Business Insider's tech and business coverage.She joined Business Insider in July 2008 as the company's sixth employee. She started as a sales planner before joining the editorial team in 2010, where she became a startup reporter and was first to cover some of today's largest tech companies, including Pinterest, Tinder, Instagram, Uber and Snap. Alyson rose to become a senior correspondent, then Executive Editor.She was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Business Insider in 2016, at which point she became the youngest and only woman to run a global business publication. Under her leadership, the business division has grown to hundreds of  millions of monthly readers.Alyson was a host of  Insider's conferences and launched a podcast, "Success! How I Did It," where she interviewed influencers ranging from Sheryl Sandberg to Steve Ballmer about their career paths (subscribe on iTunes here).She has appeared on ABC, Good Morning America, Al Jazeera, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN, and CBC, and she has interviewed media personalities such as Megyn Kelly, technology leaders like Fred Wilson, political leaders like John Brennan, and sports star LeBron James. She is a judge for the prestigious Gerald Loeb Awards in business journalism, and has been named one of Min's Rising Stars in Media, as well as Folio's 2017 Top Women in Media.She graduated from Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications, where she majored in psychology and advertising.You can read some of her investigative articles here:— Leaked videos reveal the true founding story of Snapchat— The founder who dumped Jared Kushner: Inside the phone call that left the White House star in a fit of rage— The downfall of billion-dollar startup, Fab— How a startup that raised the largest seed round in Silicon Valley history blew itself up before it even launched— The dark side of Facebook, where people lie, cheat, and make millions— A profile of Uber's controversial CEO, Travis Kalanick— The mystery of Jody Sherman, a founder who was driven to suicide and left behind a shocking business disasterDisclosure: Alyson owns bitcoin and Snap. She is also an investor in The Spun, a sports-media startup founded by her husband.
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