Look what we have here: Looksery promises to 'perfect' your look in video chats
Apart from its apparent endorsement of lookism, Looksery looks like a pretty neat app.
The product of a Kickstarter campaign successfully funded just over three months ago, Looksery is a new video selfie app that promises to change the way you look. It does so using face-tracking and face-modifying technologies for real-time video.
Looksery’s biggest selling point appears to be its ability to “perfect” your look by covering up your skin blemishes, changing your eye color and size, and altering your facial outline. And this is where I take issue with the app, as it seems to purposely promote a certain standard for beauty and attractiveness.
It’s particularly troubling in light of a remark made by founder and CEO Victor Shaburov with regard to Looksery’s potential use in call centers (via Gizmodo):
Shaburov says that some people don’t take kindly to customer support calls outsourced to India or Bangladesh, but he suggests the technology could make poor call center employees look like beautiful women. Which sounds pretty damn culturally insensitive, but those are the kinds of requests the company says it’s dealing with.
If you can’t see the video embedded above, please click here.
At least for me, Looksery really shines in its ability to change the way a user looks in ways that are meant to be amusing or, especially in time for Halloween, scary even. The app includes live animations that automatically transform a user’s face into a flaming skull, a soul-sucking monster, a cute panda, and even a grumpy cat.
While it doesn’t yet support real-time video chat, Looksery lets you record videos of your face with its live filters and 3-D animations and subsequently share them with your friends.
See also: Ticket and tow illegally parked cars in Airport Scanner developer’s Meter Maid City, Mmm Fingers, say the monsters out to eat your digits in Noodlecake’s new iOS game, and Twitter swoops in at the last minute to save Twitpic from extinction … sort of.
