Face swapping is going to be more prominent than ever thanks to Mark Zuckerberg. On Wednesday, Facebook acquired Masquerade (also known as MSQRD), a mobile app that lets you add live face effects to videos or swap your face with another face such as presidential candidates, Leonardo DiCaprio, a gorilla, and so on. Mark Zuckerberg announced the acquisition via face swap video with an Iron Man mask. In the video, Zuckerberg says, “No, I haven’t also built an Iron Man suit. I’m using this app Masquerade, that lets you put real time filters on your videos. And today I’m excited to share that the team behind Masquerade is joining Facebook.”
“Within Facebook, we’re going to be able to reach people at a scale like never before. For starters, we’ll be able to bring our technology to Facebook’s audience of nearly 1.6 billion people. This is a scale of audience we never imagined was possible,” Masquerade CEO Eugene Nevgen wrote in a blog post. He also added that the MSQRD app will stay “up and running,” and users can expect them to “keep adding fun features.” That’s a relief.
Facebook’s acquisition feels a little late to the game, with Snapchat adding the feature a month ago, but you know Zuckerberg; He won’t be left behind on trend as big as this. Happy face swapping!
