TikTok to let you design and publish your own AR effects

By Anita George Published April 12, 2022

Are you sick of augmented reality (AR) effects on TikTok? No? Great, because you’ll be getting more of them. And you’ll get to try your hand at making them too.

On Tuesday, TikTok officially announced the opening of its once-closed beta program for its new AR effects creation platform. With TikTok’s newest effects creation platform, Effect House, you’ll be allowed to create and publish your own effects and apply other user-generated effects to your own content. Effect House is still in beta, but it is now available for anyone to download and use, provided that you have a compatible Mac.

TikTok's newest AR effects creation platform, Effect House. — TikTok

According to TikTok’s official announcement, Effect House lets users build Community Effects, providing the “tools and learning resources” to do so. Such tools include advanced tracking, rich interactions, and the ability to preview your effects. And speaking of learning resources, TikTok has already developed an extensive library of how-to guides and tutorials geared toward teaching new users how to use and make the most of Effect House.

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But one of the most notable things about the new AR effects creation platform is that the effects created must follow TikTok’s Effect Guidelines which include not allowing effects that “promote colorism or negative stereotypes against protected groups” and not permitting “effects that depict cosmetic surgery, such as lip fillers, or encourage scrutiny of someone’s appearance.”

In fact, all effect submissions will be reviewed by TikTok’s Trust and Safety team prior to being published for use by TikTok users. If an effect is found to have violated such guidelines, it will be removed. And if a published effect is being used in a way that violates TikTok’s guidelines? It will be removed along with any videos that violated guidelines while using the effect.

Since the initial beta program for Effect House, TikTok says that over 450 effect creators have already published their effects on TikTok. This means you’ve likely already come across an Effect House user-generated effect on the video-sharing app. If you’re using one of these effects you’ll be able to tell because the username of the effect’s creator should be beneath the name of the effect.

Former Computing Writer

Anita George has been writing for Digital Trends' Computing section since 2018. So for almost six years, Anita has written…

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