Instagram announced yesterday they are stopping the AR integration for individual creators.
AR makes up a big part of the industry I currently work in (game-ready wearables, metaverse, fashion, digital fashion, digital art), so I’m still processing, but here are a few points for what I think happened and why.

As with a lot of things go, it just wasn’t worth the investment for them as a company, in their eyes.
There are several possible reasons why this has happed.

With Instagrams algorithm built solely on engamgement, the only filters getting pushed are meme trends and easily shareable face deformations etc. these perform much better on TikTok due to the nature of the platform yet they are the ones that get pushed by the platform due to ‘shareablity’. While the actual cool stuff, created by amazing artists are hidden on a tab in their profiles. Meaning to get to the cool content you need to KNOW the artist, currently there are no social platforms that allow you to easily filter or search artists by their art(food for thought for those creating social platforms)

Another pain point is from the creator’s perspective on the backend. TikTok and Snapchat have put in A LOT of time and effort into optimising the AR creation experience to be begginer friendly. Not only providing fantastic tutorials to follow but easy to understand and customise templates that are designed in a way to some how make them go viral easily. This gives the new creator the dopamine hit needed to get quickly back onto creating. (I will add a photo of my Snapchat public filters I created for fun and the stats, none of my filters have gone viral but this is how many people they have reached)
SparkAR (the Instagram backend app for AR) also have these templates but with no 3D knowledge it is a very hard UI to navigate causing artists (including myself) to never open the app up again🥹This means it was probably hard for them to bring onboard new artists and those who did try it out could not find a reason to stay.

In Instagrams eyes they probably ’did their best’ with creator retreats once or twice a year, adding content online... But the reality is they got rid of the core team working on AR last November and have been slowly fading out ever since.

Snapchat has been and continues to be the most beginner friendly, it is also optimised for a bigger variety of filters. For example Instagram only allows for filters superimposed onto people (tech term for this or rigging) to be only from the shoulders up(this is most likely due to app focus being on live streams and stories), while Snapchat alows not only for full body rigging but also provides features such as realistic clothing movement. These points opens up the possibilities for users and also allows the creation of wearable garments.

There was a study done in London a few years back by the Inovation Agency at the London Colllege of Fashion, where they conducted experiments and statistically proved the experience of AR fittings and the use of 3D models on EC sites lead to a significant decrease in returns and showed improvements in sales. Returns are one of the biggest issues the fashion industry is facing right now, meaning with more research AR can be utilised not just for viral content on social media😉

Fashion Tech companies like DressX and The Fabricant have built AR experiences in the form of apps using the Snapchat technology as a building base.
However, with relying on this single platform there will always be the risk of them pulling an istagram on you at any moment with no warning.

Zero10 and Filta are the only web3 friendly AR platforms I am aware of, but have not explored them yet from a creator perspective so can’t comment on them yet, but from what I have been told they are both limited in beginner onboarding as of right now.

I can’t code, but I know the basics of AR filters. If someone is willing to build it here on Lens I’m happy to get involved building it❤️🔥

That is my ted talk for now, thanks for reading, I will probably brush this up at some point with proper data/links and upload it somewhere✨