Facebook's Augmented Reality Engine Brings AI Right to Your Phone

When Hussein Mehanna showed off a new incarnation of Facebook's Big Blue App back in November, it seemed a tiny improvement--at least on the surface. The app could transform a photo from your cousin's wedding into a Picasso or a Van Gogh or a Warhol, a bit of extra fun for your social media day. But with this bit of extra fun, Mehanna and his team of Facebook engineers were laying the groundwork for an audacious effort to change the future of computing--what Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg calls a platform for augmented reality. Zuckerberg formally unveiled this platform on Tuesday morning during his keynote at Facebook's annual developer conference. In short, Facebook is transforming the camera on your smartphone into an engine for what is commonly called AR.