Augmented reality is the next big thing and all the major names in the technology industry are rushing to jump on the bandwagon. Snapchat initiated the process of commercialising AR for masses, which was followed up by Facebook and all of its subsidiary platforms. Google’s efforts towards a building a social media platform hadn’t borne fruits with Google+, but it hasn’t given up entirely and therefore is using YouTube as a means to keep hold of the market. They rolled out a chats feature to the YouTube app last year and now, there’s Augmented Reality based stories for content creators.
Google’s approach seems to be different to that of Instagram and Snapchat. Instead of providing stickers based on facial recognition algorithms, YouTube’s version of AR-based stories allows content creators to change the background like it’s done through the green screen techniques. Google in one of its recent blog posts states that they are using the power of neural networks to achieve this mobile green screen effect.
The system seems to be working on the same principle as the portrait mode that Google employs on its Pixel 2 smartphone. However, instead of blurring the background, a lot of clever algorithms are working to treat the background as a transparent layer and paste the desired layer of image or video on it. If you are willing to go through the software technicalities in details, refer to the full post here.
Presently, the feature is in a testing phase and is only available in a limited beta release for select YouTube content creators. Google is working with the content creators to gain feedback and improve the system’s tracking capabilities to iron out all the irregularities.
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