Snapchat launches 'Voice Scan' to search for lenses with your voice

The company that made vomiting rainbows cool is making it easier to find the lens you're looking for.

On Thursday at the Snap Partner Summit, the company announced a new capability called Voice Scan. Now, Snapchatters can use voice commands to search for lenses that change their appearance or the world's.

"Scan" is a cool feature in its own right. When you press and hold in the view finder, relevant lenses related to what your camera is "looking at" are unlocked. To use Voice Scan, users press and hold, and then ask for what they want. The example Snap gave in its presentation was "Make my hair pink," which then surfaces a filter that — gasp — turns your hair pink.

Snap didn't build its own voice assistant or anything. The feature comes through a partnership with the company SoundHound, which is providing the voice A.I. technology. SoundHound is best known as a music search app to consumers. But it also has a voice search and intelligence platform, providing voice command services to companies like Pandora and Mercedes-Benz.

The breadth of lenses is pretty staggering if you ever take the time to really explore what Snapchat offers. Beyond the lenses and filters that pop up to the right of the camera button, there is a whole "explore" portal, which Snapchat launched in 2018, that features lenses created by Snapchat's lens creator community.

You can always scroll through the lens carousel yourself, and peruse the Lens Explorer by scrolling or searching through a text search bar. But the Voice Scan feature brings a new, needed way to find a lens quickly and easily if you're looking for something specific. We can't speak to how well it works yet, but will be updating this story once we've had some time to check it out for ourselves.