Sergey Tokarev is an investor of RefaceAl, a Ukrainian IT development company, that developed Doublicat, a face replacement app. The Doublicat app (now – Reface) allows its users to replace faces on GIF-images. The app has already been downloaded by over 5 million users on AppStore and GooglePlay in the various countries of the world.
Sergey Tokarev is an investor of RefaceAl, a Ukrainian IT development company, that developed Doublicat, a face replacement app. The Doublicat app (now – Reface) allows its users to replace faces on GIF-images. The app has already been downloaded by over 5 million users on AppStore and GooglePlay in the various countries of the world.
The users of the app can choose between thousands of GIF-images in different categories including reactions, emotions, movies, and many more. By using this app, you can replace your face with the face of a famous actor, politician, athlete, celebrity, or even, the president of the United States. It is an entertaining app that allows you to replace the face of your friends, family members, and relatives. The app comes in two versions, free and premium. The premium users can download photos and GIFs, and remove the watermark from ready-made GIFs.
The Popularity of Doublicat
Doublicat was launched by RefaceAI on January 13, 2020. Since then, the app has been growing intensively in various countries. It was downloaded by at least 750000 users in the first two months of its release. In May, there were over 1 million users of the app. After two months, it crossed the figure of 4 million downloads on the app stores. Sergey Tokarev, an IT businessman, told the media that Doublicat had beaten TikTok and Privatbank in Ukraine in early July.
The app grabbed more downloads than Tiktok in the Philippines and Thailand. In Europe, Doublicat entered into the tops of AppStore charts on July 6. In the US, the app was ranked 13th on GooglePlay as of July 28. Similarly, it was ranked 17th in the Entertainment category of AppStore. Moreover, it got a position among the top-10 best entertainment apps in Italy. The users from Malaysia, Brunei, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan also liked the app very much.
Development stages and success factors
Sergey Tokarev talked about the development stages of the app in detail. He said that the development team took three years to develop its own Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology to replace faces on photos and videos. After the successful development of the technology, the company started working on the development of Reflect. The Reflect app was released last year that allowed its users to replace faces on photos. It attracted Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, as well. He showed the results of the Reflect app on his Twitter account. This shoutout proved worthy for the company and boosted the morale of the development team.
“During the following year, we were working on improving the technology so that faces could be changed not only on photos, but on videos as well,” Tokarev said. As a result of this improvement effort, the company was able to release the Doublicat app in January 2020 that replaces faces on GIF-images. He added that Musk’s post helped the app to become popular rapidly.
There are three main factors that played a crucial role in the success of the app. These factors include unique technology, quality results, and shoutouts given by celebrities. The Doublicat app works on machine-learning technology based on artificial intelligence. It produces realistic results as compared to other similar apps. Two popular Ukrainian singers, Olga Polyakova and Jerry Heil used the app in the development of their music videos. It created a chain reaction on the social media related to the app downloads, according to Sergey Tokarev. The future aim of RefaceAI is to develop a technology that will replace faces on videos.