Have you ever wanted to create a deepfake video or GIF of your own, but one that would not cause any harm but just amusement? That’s what Snapchat is sort-of trying to do with their Cameo feature which is now being tested out in France. You will be able to use your selfies to put yourself into some of the pre-prepared looping videos that they have so you can send to your friends to react, to express emotion, or just to share something silly.
SnapchaCameos is now being tested on selected users in France and some international markets, according to Tech Crunch. Don’t expect a highly edited kind of deep fake but it’s more similar to JibJab video messages which became popular a few years ago or more recently, Chines social app Zao. It’s a feature that could make Snapchat more interesting again to its users since they’ve been losing ground to competitors like Instagram.
Using the Snapchat Cameos is actually pretty easy. The first step is to take a selfie and then to choose whether you want a male or female body type. Then you tap on the Bitmoji button from the messaging keyboard since that’s where Cameos is located. There are 150 looping video clips that you can choose from and they’ll be adding more every week. You have videos like dancing crazy, falling asleep, smiling with a smiley, etc.
Once you choose the video and add your selfie, it will stretch and move it around to create various facial reactions that can be attached to the heads in the videos. There are also multi-friend cameos if you want to see yourself with other friends in the video. You can browse the different categories of scenes or search for terms that are included in the videos. You can save them to your camera roll or just send to your friends directly.
Snapchat says they are looking at a December 18 global roll out for all Android users. Hopefully this beta test will run smoothly, in case you’re planning to send out various Christmas-themed videos with you as the star this holiday.
