Meta, the company formerly known as Facebook, has announced a range of new AI-powered features for its family of apps and devices at its Connect event. The new features include AI stickers, image editing tools, a conversational assistant, and AI characters.
AI stickers allow users to generate customized stickers for their chats and stories by typing text prompts. The stickers are created using technology from Llama 2 and Emu, Meta’s foundational model for image generation. AI stickers will be available to select English-language users in WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and Facebook Stories in the next month.
Image editing tools, such as restyle and backdrop, let users transform or co-create images with friends using Emu. Restyle applies the visual styles that users describe to their images, while backdrop changes the scene or background of their images based on their prompts¹. These tools will be coming soon to Instagram¹.
Meta AI is an advanced conversational assistant that can give users real-time information and generate photorealistic images from their text prompts. Meta AI is available on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram, and is coming to Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and Quest 3. Meta AI can also cite sources and provide links to the websites it uses to answer questions.
Meta also introduced 28 more AIs in beta, with unique interests and personalities. Some of them are played by celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady, Kendall Jenner, and Naomi Osaka. Users can chat with these AIs on Messenger or watch their stories on Instagram. Meta plans to make AIs for businesses and creators available in the future, as well as release its AI studio for people and developers to build their own AIs.
These new AI features are part of Meta’s vision to create more immersive and expressive experiences for its users. However, they also pose new challenges for the industry in terms of privacy, security, and ethics. Meta says it has built in safeguards and will roll out its new AIs slowly.
