Meitu focuses on seasonal selfie filters and AI

Leveraging social, seasonal and cultural favourites, Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year, Meitu’s app enhancements look set to strengthen the popularity of selfies through celebratory-themed additions.  

Seasonal appeal​

On 13th February 2018, photo app Meitu presented new filters in time for Valentine’s Day. This featured an area in its app that provided specific effects and filters to enables couples to take “refined selfies”. ​

Meitu has also developed a series of AI features for Chinese New Year festivities, otherwise known as the Spring Festival.

In 2017, the app creator launched Andy Artbot, its first AI painting robot. Due to the level of interaction with Andy and the overall success of the robot, the use of new AI features to engage users and coincide with seasonal events are strongly on the marketing agenda for Meitu.

Knowing the audience​

"Through the deep learning AI technology, we can understand the differences of beauty standards in different countries,"​ commented Xinhong Wu, founder and CEO of Meitu in a recent press release. "With AI, we can create much more precise and customised recommendations for our users,"​ he added.

With a focus on fun, engagement and interaction, Meitu's Chinese New Year features incorporate AI technology to produce activities such as "winning lucky money with face score"​. This enables users to take selfies and transform them into painting portraits using the AI robotic function. Once complete, the AI system then scored users based on the facial attractiveness of the portraits.  

Widespread appeal​

Although this particular feature is designed for users from the mainland of China, the Valentine's Day filters and the Andy effects for Spring Festival were launched with a special Vietnamese language version to specifically attract Vietnamese consumers.

"Meitu started to expand overseas in 2014 and now over 30% of our users are from abroad,"​ said Wu.

Commenting on the required evolution of AI to meet consumer demands, Wu went on to say: “To cater to the different beauty-appreciation standards in different countries, we have to leverage our AI strength to spot the different trends and roll out suitable effects to fit local customs.”​

Data collection​

To roll-out these filters, AI deep learning technology techniques are required to rate users' appearance more objectively.

Therefore, the China-headquartered leading mobile Internet company ensured its Meitu app analysed over a million image data sets and evaluated user feedback to appreciate relevant and local beauty trends.   

With over 1.5 billion unique users worldwide as of June 2017, Meitu builds its software and hardware around the concept of ‘beauty’ and has released products including BeautyCam, Meipai and Meitu Smartphones to support its vision.