Snapchat will soon make real clouds vomit rainbows

With lenses, Snapchat has already made augmented reality a large, core part of its platform. And now the popular app is looking to further expand into AR with environment-detection that'll augment your surroundings.

According to The Information, Snap Inc. is working on a more advanced version of the real-time "World Lenses" that were introduced last year.

The new lenses, which don't have a name yet, will reportedly be able to "identify environmental elements" and let users "layer an object like a blimp in the sky."

It's unclear how the feature, which is currently being tested internally and isn't slated for a release soon, works exactly. For instance, we don't know to what the environment detection is looking for and if the overlaid objects/images will be applied automatically or not.

Will users have any control over where they want the images/objects to be applied to within the detected scene? Snapchat declined to comment when Mashable reached out to the company.

The Information also notes that the feature will be available to users before it's available to advertisers, which is sort of reassuring if you're the slightest bit worried about pointing your phone camera in, say, a public place and getting served augmented reality ads.

Snapchat has a lot to prove as it reportedly gears up for its IPO -- specifically that it's not a one-trick pony now that Instagram is a real threat.

By pivoting deeper into the augmented reality space (a hot tech buzzword and trend for 2017), Snapchat can make a compelling case to its users and investors that it can still innovate even while Instagram continues to copy its features.

Kerry Flynn contributed to this report.