If you are even remotely active on Instagram, chances are that you've tried at least one of the countless Augmented Reality (AR) filters that identify which Friends character you are, find the right moustache for your face, or add a graduation cap on your head, among a million other things. Although filters have been around for a while, last year, the platform opened up its Spark AR studio to anyone who wishes to create their own. With people spending more time online during the lockdown in India, these filters have been getting their own localised versions. For instance, within days of Gu Christopher's gibberish filter going viral, there were Tamil and Bengali versions. If you open the story feature on the app and slide over to the browse effects option, you'll find that Indian AR creators are moving beyond the usual photo effects to come up with filters that engage with the desi community.

Lockdown skill
AR filters are computer-generated effects that are superimposed on real-life images. Bored of scrolling through his social media feed, 20-year-old Mihir Madhav Lapalikar, a BMM student and a graphic designer, decided to try his hand at a new skill. "I was introduced to AR filters back when Snapchat used to be cool. Inspired by beatboxer Vice World Loopstation Champion Inkie's filter, I decided to create my own for the beatboxing community in Mumbai," says Lapalikar, whose filter randomly chooses a beatboxers's name for the user, who has to then copy their style.