Snapchat is expanding further into generative AI with ‘Dreams’

Snapchat is preparing to further expand into generative AI features, after earlier launching its AI-powered chatbot My AI, which can now respond with a Snap back, not just text. With the company’s forthcoming generative AI feature called “Dreams,” Snap will again experiment with AI images — but soon, those images may contain you and your friends in imaginative backgrounds.

The company has been developing features that allow Snapchat users to take or upload selfies that will allow the app to generate new pictures of you in scenarios you imagine, according to findings from app researcher and developer Steve Moser. This sounds similar to what other AI photo apps on the App Store already offer.

One in particular — an app called Remini — went viral last month as TikTok users realized they could upload their selfies in order to receive professional-looking headshots for LinkedIn without having to pay for a pro photo shoot.

Snapchat is not likely interested in boring headshots, though.

Instead, it imagines Dreams as a way to use AI-generated selfies to place pictures of you in “fantastical places and scenarios,” Moser’s research indicates. Like other AI selfie apps, Snapchat would need clear selfies to work with — not ones where your features are obstructed or those with other people in them. Having a variety of angles, expressions, and lighting conditions will also result in better AI photos, the app will instruct users.

In addition to putting yourself into these AI “Dreams,” the company is developing Dreams with Friends — a feature where users give their friends permission to generate these AI “dream” images with the two of them included, Moser discovered.

References to purchasing Dream Packs found in Snapchat’s app also suggests this may be a monetizable feature at some point.

Dreams was first spotted earlier this spring, when reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi revealed the feature would allow users to place their own likeness into realms powered by generative AI. The new feature was being given a prominent placement in Snapchat’s app, right in between the Camera Roll and Stories, he found.

The new developments around Dreams with Friends and the Dream Packs suggest Snapchat is now moving forward with the feature.

Snapchat declined to comment on its plans for Dreams.