New generative AI tools announced Wednesday at Meta’s Connect event will allow users to edit images and create stickers using text prompts. AI image editing will be available on Instagram, and AI-generated chat stickers will roll out on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger.
AI-powered photo editing on Instagram includes two new features: restyle and backdrop. With restyle, users input a text prompt — Meta’s examples include “watercolor” or “magazine collage” — and the tool updates the existing image based on those directions.
The backdrop feature also utilizes a text prompt by the user to add new AI-generated backgrounds to images (“surround me with puppies,” for example). For both editing features, Meta says it will identify when images are created using AI tools so audiences can discern whether what they’re seeing is synthetic or human-generated. The company says it’s experimenting with other labeling features, including visible and invisible markers.
AI-generated stickers will bring more synthetic content to Meta’s apps. Users will have the option to create stickers using text prompts, which should result in “multiple unique, high-quality stickers in seconds.” The feature is powered by Meta’s large language model Llama 2, first announced in February and open-sourced in July to compete with ChatGPT. AI-generated stickers will appear on Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories and DMs, Messenger, and WhatsApp. Select English language users will get access to the feature over the next month.
Tech companies are in a frenzy of launching AI-powered tools that promise better, faster, and more personalized versions of tools that often already exist, from movie recommendations and bots that synthesize news to uncanny face filters. But we’ve seen AI image editing and generation before, and more recently, other social media platforms seem to have the exact same idea as Meta.
The news of AI image editing tools on Meta apps follows a similar announcement from YouTube earlier in September. At the company’s Made on YouTube event, leadership announced several new AI-powered features that, if used, would significantly increase the amount of AI-generated content on the platform — and alter what kind of content is created.
Like Meta, YouTube’s newly announced Dream Screen feature uses text prompts to automatically generate AI backgrounds for YouTube Shorts. Down the line, YouTube expects creators to be able to edit their existing content using AI — similar to what Meta is bringing to Instagram.
AI tools on YouTube will soon inform what kind of videos creators will make as well, using a feature that will generate video ideas and scripts based on what other content audiences are watching. YouTube hasn’t yet said how AI-generated material will be labeled on the platform. (TikTok recently introduced a new AI content label and rules around naming AI face filters.)
But judging from the wave of features coming from Meta, YouTube, and other companies, users are about to see much more AI-generated content on social platforms appearing next to everything else. The question is whether these tools will actually make platforms and content more interesting.
