Snapchat is rolling out AI-powered video lenses

The new lenses can animate a fox or a raccoon in your snap.

by Jay Peters

Mar 12, 2025, 6:59 PM UTC

Image: Alex Castro / The Verge

Jay Peters is a news editor covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.

Snapchat Platinum subscribers will now be able to use video lenses featuring AI generated animals or flowers, Snap announced today.

There will initially be three of the lenses, which Snap calls “AI Video Lenses.” The fox lens, for example, can have a fox snuggle on your shoulder, while the raccoon one can have raccoons scamper over your head. With the flower lens, flowers will appear in front of you and the camera will zoom out.

Three screenshots of Snap’s AI Video Lenses. One features a person and a fox, one features a person and raccoons, and one features a person and flowers.

Not going to lie, that raccoon one frightens me a bit. You can see the lenses in motion in Snap’s blog post.

Image: Snap

Snap says it will be adding new AI-powered lenses every week.

“These Lenses, powered by our in-house built generative video model, bring some of the most cutting edge AI tools available today to Snapchatters through a familiar Lens format,” Snap says in its blog post. “We have a long history of being first movers to bring advanced AR, ML and AI tools directly to our community, and we’re excited to see what Snapchatters create.”

Last year, Snap showed off an on-device AI model that can transform a user’s background and clothes in real time.

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