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F8: Facebook focuses on augmented reality

At the F8 Facebook developer’s conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would focus on re-imagining your phone camera as an augmented reality platform.
At the keynote address for the F8 conference, Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would focus on building an augmented reality platform around your phone camera (instead of glasses or visors) as an initial step toward making augmented reality a part of our lives.

Some of the applications that Mark demonstrated include being able to add 3D objects to a photo or video.  Some of the effects looked similar to Snapchat, except that it was more sophisticated because it uses artificial intelligence to enable the camera to recognize the 3D depth of objects and thus be able to place 3D images such as imaginary objects, or 3D text, or notes, realistically within the scene.

AR demo showing 3D text appearing to interact realistically with objects.

 

Object recognition shows context sensitive effects such as this digital rain cloud effect over a potted plant.

 

This is not just for entertainment but can also be used for providing useful information about objects, such as a review of a product that pops up when you view that product through your camera.

Here’s the keynote:

I’m hoping that Facebook’s AR technology will be sophisticated enough that the AR effects can eventually be added to a 360 photo or video, not just a photo or video from a smartphone camera.