The Situational Influences of AR Face and Body Filters

Through digital augmentation it is already possible to smooth one's skin, don virtual bunny ears, or sparkle. With future augmented reality glasses we will be able to see and wear such augmentations while out and about. Yet, the effects of these digital changes to our appearance are presently poorly understood. We investigate how different kinds of facial and bodily augmentations influence how we are perceived by others. For this purpose we recruited four speakers to enact eight different scenarios, creating a dataset of 32 short videos. We apply a selection of beautification and scenario-specific augmented reality filters to these clips to create a set of 160 videos. We then evaluate how the speakers in these videos are perceived through a crowdsourced study with 165 participants. Our analysis shows that filters indeed have an effect on how speakers are perceived, modulating effects from other sources, such as who is speaking. The direction and magnitude of this effect is filter-dependent, pointing to the potential of designing them for specific social situations.