Acquired by Snap 👻

Snap just made its latest acquisition. 💸

News just broke that the company has bought up AI Factory, a Ukrainian startup that will power a new animated selfie feature in the Snapchat app. These animated selfies are being dubbed “Cameos” by Snap — they map selfies onto videos and resemble, well, deepfakes.

AI Factory was founded by Victor Shaburov, who previously founded Looksery and sold that company to Snap in 2015. In case you don’t remember, Looksery created facial feature detection and manipulation technology which has since led to one of Snapchat most successful developments — “Lenses.” Remember when we all augmented our faces to look like babies? That was a lens, and it became so popular that it contributed to quarterly user growth at Snap last year. (Note: Snapchat recently launched another face-aging lens to bring people back to the app.) 

The details of the deal haven’t been confirmed, but some reports speculate that Snap paid $166 million for AI Factory.

For alllll the Snap products — from automated ads to Spectacles — check out this list. 👈

For a similar deepfake-y product, try Morphin.

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