Snapchat boosts its AR platform with voice search, Local Lenses and SnapML – TechCrunch

Snapchat's augmented reality dreams might be starting to look a bit more realistic. The company has been subtly improving its AR-powered Lenses every year, improving the technical odds-and-ends and strengthening its dev platform. The result is that today, more than 170 million people -- over three-quarters of Snap's daily active users -- access the app's augmented reality features on a daily basis, the company says. Two years ago, Snap shared that creators had designed over 100,000 lenses on the platform; now Snap says there have been more than 1 million lenses created. The goofy filters are bringing users to the app and the company is slowly building a more interconnected platform around augmented reality that is beginning to look more and more promising.