Instagram's selfie 'face filters' are cute, but nothing special

Proving once again it has no shame, Instagram has announced "face filters," its own blatant copy of Snapchat's lenses.

If you've used Snapchat's selfie lenses to add dog ears or a flower crown on top of your selfies, you'll be right at home with face filters because the new ones rolling out are very similar.

Accessing face filters in Instagram works the same as selfie lenses in Snapchat. Swipe right from the feed or tap the "Your Story" icon in the upper left of your feed to launch the Stories camera. Then you can either press and hold on your face or tap the face filters icon.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Face-tracking appears to be solid and on par with Snapchat lenses, but honestly, they're nothing really special at this point. If you've used other augmented-reality lens apps like Snow you'll have already seen the dozens and dozens of different animal filters out there.

But I suppose if you've never used Snapchat's selfie lenses or couldn't figure them out, sure, why not? Now mom and dad can get adorbs bunnifying themselves, too.

Here's what the filters look like:

Bunny rabbit

Koala

Flower crown

Nerd

Butterfly crown

Ice tiara

Blue feather crown

Face glow?!

Unoriginal as Instagram's face filters are, there's no doubt in my mind they're gonna be a hit. Instagram and Facebook's blatant copying of Snapchat's core features is sad (can't they think of anything new?), but it a strategy that works.

Last month, Instagram announced it has 200 million daily active users using its Stories feature -- more than the entire daily active user base of Snapchat. It's nothing shy of impressive and only proves how sticky Instagram is.

It might seem like Instagram has aped so many of Snapchat's features that there aren't any left to copy. But we're not at the end of the story yet: Many are predicting we'll soon see Instagram's own version of Snapchat Spectacles.