Facebook CEO sees few boundaries with augmented reality ecosystem
SAN JOSE, Calif. — Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday introduced what he positioned as the first mainstream augmented reality platform, a way for people to view and digitally manipulate the physical world around them through the lens of their smartphone cameras.
What that means today is fairly limited. Augmented reality is nascent — people can add simple flourishes on top of their photos or videos, like sticking a pixelated blue beard on a selfie or adding puppy dog stickers in the front yard of a photo of their house.
But in Zuckerberg’s telling, there are few boundaries for how this technology would evolve. He said he envisioned a world in which people can eventually point smartphone cameras at a bowl of cereal and have an app create tiny sharks swimming in the bowl of milk. Friends can leave virtual notes for one another on the walls outside their favorite restaurants, noting which menu item is the most delicious.
Apps like Pokemon Go, the breakout augmented reality hit that went viral globally last year, are just the beginning for Zuckerberg. One day, he mused, household objects could perhaps be replaced entirely by software.
“Think about how many of the things around us don’t actually need to be physical,” Zuckerberg said in an interview last week. “Instead of a $500 TV sitting in front of us, what’s to keep us from one day having it be a $1 app?”
Facebook executives stressed that the technology is still in its early stages and that the “journey to the future of augmented reality is just one percent finished,” as Deb Liu, vice president of platform and marketplaces, put it.
Facebook does not expect to build all of these software experiences itself. At its annual developer conference Tuesday, the social network called for programmers to assist the company by building augmented reality-based apps to work with what Facebook calls its Camera Effects Platform. Facebook announced a new set of tools to help developers and will begin the initiative with a small handful of partners in a closed test.
One early partner app is Giphy Thoughts, made by Giphy, a short-form video startup that acts as a search engine for animated GIFs. With Giphy Thoughts, for instance, people can attach cartoon thought bubbles above the heads of people they view through their Facebook camera lens.
“It goes back to creative expression,” said David Rosenberg, director of business development at Giphy. “Facebook Camera is just going to be this massive audience of people ready to make deeply personal content they can share with their friends.”