What Are AR Filters, and What Careers Use Them?

Written by Coursera Staff • Updated on

Learn about AR filters, virtual overlays you use on social media platforms, the machine learning technology that powers them, and the careers that use them.

[Featured Image] A person sitting on a couch in their living room holds up their smartphone at arm's length to use an AR filter.

Key takeaways

Augmented reality (AR) filters enhance a user's experience with digital media by letting them interact with branded content in a virtual environment. 

  • Various types of AR filters allow you to achieve different results. For example, beauty filters let you change your physical appearance, character filters let you dress up as your favorite character, and branded filters offer a way to interact with brands. 

  • Many social media platforms offer AR filters for users to experiment with in their video or story creation sections. 

  • You can use machine learning algorithms to build these virtual overlays and tools like TensorFlow to develop the underlying technology, or platform-provided AR filter tools to use them on social media or sharing with friends. 

Explore the use of AR filters in marketing by learning what they are, how they work, the different types of AR filters, and what careers use them. To gain a broader understanding of the technology, enroll in the Extended Reality for Everybody Specialization from the University of Michigan. During this three-course beginner-level program, you'll have an opportunity to learn about the concepts behind AR, VR, experience design, and interactive design. You'll also gain practical experience designing your own applications. 

What are AR filters?

AR filters are virtual augmentations of reality you can access through a social media platform on a smartphone that overlay digital effects with reality. These filters overlay anything from branded content, virtual “airbrushed” make-up, or costumes like silly hats. While other augmented reality experiences like Pokemon Go use a smartphone to overlay the virtual game with the physical environment, AR filters target you, the user, to digitally alter your appearance.

Marketers and brand strategists use AR filters to promote products, create awareness, and increase reach through user-generated content. The social media platform Snapchat popularized AR filters in 2015 when it launched AR filters, which invite users to make ads for brands using the filter. 

The technology behind AR filters

The technology behind AR filters uses (ML) to create an approximated 3D rendering of the face in a selfie. While different AR filter creator models might differ, Google, for example, uses two ML algorithms to detect face location and then predict the geometry in that location. To ensure a diverse range of users can use the AR filter, they train it on a geographically diverse data set. 

Another aspect beneath the AR filter is optimizing the consumer hardware of various smartphones. Google’s model has multiple architectures so that it runs efficiently even if the device does not have the best graphics processing unit (GPU) acceleration for its effects. 

Read more: 8 Popular Augmented Reality Frameworks to Explore

Types of AR filters

AR filters exist in many different types to serve various social media personas, brands, and interests of users. Below is a list of some popular kinds of filters:

  • Beauty: Beauty and makeup filters optimize your face to specific standards by changing the size of facial features, adding blush and eye makeup, and making skin look smooth. Beauty filters are typically used to enhance or alter a person's physical appearance in real-time. 

  • Branded: Brands use AR filters as marketing tools that allow you to interact with a brand using the filter, which involves logo placement, CTAs, and branded content. For example, Dr. Pepper has a Snapchat AR filter that allows you to place a fridge with the Dr. Pepper logo in your space. 

  • Character: Character filters are entertainment filters that allow you to dress up as popular fictional characters, like a Disney princess. The filter conforms your features to the character's, allowing you to see how you would look if you were that character.

  • Silly: Unlike beauty or character filters, silly filters comically alter an image by distorting your face or giving you a goofy hat and glasses. These typically are entertaining but could contain branded or character content as well. 

  • Try-on: Try-on filters allow you to virtually put on a pair of glasses, an outfit, lipstick color, a hat, shoes, or a tattoo to help you purchase without going into a store. 

Who uses AR filters?

Various companies and individuals use AR filters in a range of industries. From the machine learning engineers who develop the technology behind AR filters to the consumer who filters their photos with it, explore how varying entities use AR filters:

  • Engineers: Machine learning engineers using tools like TensorFlow create the technology that allows for real-time 3D tracking of your face so that a brand can create an AR filter using ready-made assets from a social media platform. 

  • Social media companies: Social media platforms, such as Meta, TikTok, and Snapchat, implement the creation and availability of AR filters on their platforms to encourage you to use them and third parties to create them.

  • Brand strategists: To increase user engagement and brand awareness, brand strategists design AR filters using a third-party platform like Snapchat’s Lens Web Builder or Spark AR that aligns with brand principles. 

  • Marketers: Companies create AR filters that allow customers to try on products virtually before buying, facilitating increased volume and accuracy of purchases. 

  • Consumers: Users are entertained when interacting with AR filters by sending selfies to their friends or posting on their stories. They also participate in brand awareness by creating user-generated content (UGC) for free as they use the filter. 

Pros and cons of AR filters

AR filters offer many benefits for companies, including organically increasing brand awareness and promoting their products. However, professionals within the field still need to address ethical questions like diversity and unattainable beauty standards. 

Pros of AR filters

The advantages of AR filters for brands include their usefulness in marketing, social media advertising, and brand awareness; examine each pro in more detail below:

  • Engagement: Brands can create games within AR filters, like quizzes or puzzles, to promote their product.

  • Accessibility: AR filters can place users within the world or narrative of a brand just by using a smartphone.

  • Reach: Virtual AR filter try-ons may reach consumers who might otherwise not have tried on a particular product in person, increasing sales. 

  • Credibility: It allows marketing teams to take advantage of UGC, which is sometimes seen as more trustworthy than traditional marketing approaches.

Overall, AR filters provide companies and marketing teams with new ways to reach consumers while entertaining them. 

Cons of AR filters

Even with all the new ways to reach consumers, AR filters do have some drawbacks, like the proliferation of unattainable beauty standards:

  • Unrealistic expectations: Beautification AR filters like TikTok’s “Bold Glamour” create a highly realistic glamourized version of the user, creating damaging mental health effects for users. 

  • Lack of transparency: Additionally, everyday users on social media platforms perform a kind of unpaid labor while using them by promoting brands, products, and lifestyles for access to the platform itself. 

While AR filters are fun to use, they create ethical questions for social media platforms, brands, and users. 

How to get started in AR filters

If you want to start experimenting with AR filters, hop on your social media platform of choice and navigate to the “stories” or video creation section. Then, experiment with various filters for fun or to see how brands use them. 

If you are interested in creating your own AR filters, start by creating them in Meta Spark, Snapchat’s Lens Studio, or TikTok’s Effect House. Each program has a tutorial center that teaches you the basics, but creating AR filters requires a basic understanding of visual scripting, 3D design, and graphic design. 

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