Snapchat's new 'time machine' lens is a nightmare look at your future self

Months after FaceApp's viral "old age" filter launched a thousand memes (and misguided rumors of Russian spying), Snapchat is getting an age-defying feature of its own and the results are...profoundly disturbing.

The app added a new "time machine" lens, which lets you age from baby face to senior citizen in a manner of seconds. It's existentially horrifying and will almost certainly be the app's next big viral hit.

Snapchat has offered both "baby face" and "old age" style selfie effects in the past, but the new "time machine" lens is the first that has offered the full progression from digitally enhanced toddler to AI-assisted old age in one go.

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That might not sound like a huge distinction, but it's one that makes the overall effect much more dramatic than what we've seen in the past from Snapchat and others. I am still cringing at my own "time machine" aided selfies and yet, for some reason, I can't stop torturing myself with them. I mean, just look at them.

Yikes. Credit: screenshot: karissa bell / snapchat Send help. Credit: screenshot: karissa bell / snapchat

But, given our collective obsession with finding new ways to manipulate our selfies into looking like celebrities, old people, babies, and works of art, it feels almost inevitable that Snapchat's new lens will be a big hit with its users.

Behind the scenes, the company has been quietly investing in machine learning in order to ramp up its in-app augmented reality effects — efforts that seem to be paying off. Snapchat scored two big hits already this year, its much-memed (and problematic) "gender swap" effect, and the baby face lens. Snap executives have credited the popularity of these AR effects as fueling much of the app's growth over the last year. The app has added more than 20 million new users in 2019, following a year of negative growth in 2018.

Whether Snapchat's "time machine" will have the same impact is unclear. But the selfies it produces are definitely their own special brand of nightmare fuel. Thanks, Snapchat.