As somebody from the business department, i must interrupt the discussion here -and ask the elephant-in-the room-question. How can this be like SEARCH ? Can we add SEARCH to every photo? SEARCH generates revenue, those other projects we never supported to establish there own market- they did not generate revenue. So, if this is not in any way related to search, i thin we should cancel the project, before everyone here goes micro-soft. If extrapolated experience shows one thing, people who do extrapolate from past successes are doomed to fail, and SEARCH is a future success, that is for sure.
Google wants to produce AI. An AI that people would be interested in interacting with is one that has a face. Machine Learning needs data about a given domain to accurately replicate human performance in that domain. Snapchat is a rich field of video/picture facial data, that Google would love the data from.
I wonted to mock "grown up" companys inserting the milk cow into every product, because senior management now knows it better. Like for example inserting SEARCH into Amp.