Half of the company’s filters (that’s 16 in total) are now available offline, with more in the pipeline, according to Prisma.
In the past, the app would transform the look of your images into the style of a famous artist (such as Pablo Picasso or Roy Lichtenstein) by feeding the photo through an artificial intelligence. The AI would then reinterpret your image using a deep learning method known as neural networks. With its latest update for iOS, that algorithm will be available offline on a smartphone for the first time.
Prisma Labs is touting the update as a first for the industry: “no team or company has ever done anything close,” says the company. “We have managed to implement neural networks to smartphones, which means users will no longer need an internet connection to turn their photos into art pieces,” explains Prisma.
Running the deep learning system right on your smartphone will allow Prisma’s servers to speed up processing times, and bring full videos to the app in the near future. The company claims that retouching times will be reduced to five seconds on the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus, and slightly longer on the iPhone 6 models. An Android update is also imminent, and could be rolled out as soon as next week, according to The Verge.
Prisma states that its app has now been installed 52 million times, and boasts 4 million daily active users. That’s a significant increase over the 7.5 million downloads that boosted it to the top of the iOS App Store charts last month.
