Earlier this month, Google rolled out a new feature on its Pixel 9 series of phones that lets users add the photographer to a group photo by swapping someone out and taking a separate photo, and a new social network launched by a pair of Oxford University PhDs is developing an app that will let you add friends to photos in a more meme-able and fun way.
Vybe is a mobile app that lets you upload a selfie and place your face on any photo or existing template. It also lets you swap your face with your friend's in a photo with multiple people. The tool changes the skin color of the person in the template based on your own skin color so there's no mismatch between your face and the rest of your body.
Users can see photos created by their friends in their feed and upload their own templates, which the startup believes will encourage more people to create content on the platform. Vybe says it has more than 100,000 user-created templates, and that number is growing rapidly because creating them requires little effort.
The company built a social network around this to encourage people to connect more, and while that's its core proposition right now, the startup wants to build out more photo- and video-related tools that combine social, AR, and generative AI.
Vybe raised $4.75 million in seed funding led by Stellation Capital with support from Scribble Ventures, Coalition Operators, Neo and Blueprint FTC, with additional individuals including NFL player Kelvin Beachum, early Facebook and Uber investor Ali Partovi and OpenAI Chief Product Officer Kevin Weil contributing to the round.
The company was founded by Dr. Mandela Patrick and Dr. Arnab Ghosh, both Oxford University PhDs who worked at Meta and Snap, respectively. Dr. Patrick's research focused on multimodal AI video and image understanding. He then worked on the core AI algorithms for Instagram Reels, while Dr. Ghosh studied generative models for image rendering. He worked at Snap on the launch of generative AI features such as Bitmoji backgrounds.
The co-founders say they wanted to build a social product with network effect value, and they also see value in making a tool that lets you do things with one click, like adding your or your friends' faces to a photo, something that previously took a long time.
“During my time at Snap, I saw how small details can make a big difference in adoption. Photoshop has been available for years, but Snap enabled users to create different experiences on a larger scale with Lenses,” Ghosh said.
Face-swapping apps such as Reface already exist, but Vybe's co-founders hope the ease of creating templates and users remixing them will help form a network.
“If you think about successful social products, they had a signature format — for example, on Snapchat it was disappearing messages, and we think that format for us is an AI-powered photo shoot with friends,” Patrick said.
The company is exploring new revenue streams through brand partnerships, advertising and subscriptions, and is also preparing to introduce features such as support for in-app video and animation.
Peter Boyce II, founder of Stellation Capital, believes that the founders have a deep knowledge and interest in AI, which will help them better understand the platform. He believes that the simplicity and ease of use of the product will make Vybe a hit.
“All the technology they've used before fades into the background and all you're left with is a simple, easy and fun way to engage with different people. To me, that's the ingredients for something that's going mainstream,” he told TechCrunch.
Relying on a format that encouraged people to share in real time when they received a notification, BeReal ran into problems in terms of sustaining growth and generating revenue. The company was eventually acquired by French mobile app and game publisher Voodoo.
Vybe's co-founders and investors are confident the company will be successful as it looks to create more formats and involve users in the creation process, but they stressed that it's important not to create behavior that creates fatigue among users.
The app is available for download on iOS and Android.