Meta AI's GenAI 'Imagine' features expand across Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger

Meta AI's Imagine features, which use generative AI to turn text prompts into images, are now being expanded across Facebook and Instagram, the company announced at Meta Connect 2024 on Wednesday. With the update, users will be able to use prompts to generate AI photos directly in their feed, Stories, and for their Facebook profile pictures.

The new capabilities could help users and creators call more attention to their posts and shares by allowing them to generate fanciful and eye-catching images to accompany their text. Once the images are shared, friends and followers can see them and react to them or even mimic them, Meta says.

Facebook users already upload photos of characters, animals, or something else besides their own photo as their profile picture to better protect their privacy. Now they won't have to seek out such a photo: They can simply generate one.

The AI can also suggest captions for Stories on Facebook and Instagram, as a part of this update.

The image generation capabilities will come to Messenger, too, to create personalized chat themes. This is accessed by tapping on "Themes" in the chat. Before, users could change the background of their chats as well as the color of the text bubbles, but Meta AI offers far more options in terms of the types of images that can be used.

Meta says it's also testing new AI-generated content in Facebook and Instagram feeds where it will display AI images created for users based on interests and trends.

This is largely designed to push people to try Meta AI by tapping on a suggested prompt to reimagine the photo or by swiping to generate content in real time using Meta Imagine AI.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg remarked during the event that Meta AI differentiates itself not only by offering "state-of-the-art AI models but also unlimited access to those models for free, integrated easily into our different products and apps," he said.

"So Meta AI is on track to being the most used AI assistant in the world by the end of this year. In fact, it's probably already there. … We're almost at 500 million monthly actives, and we haven't even launched in some of the bigger countries yet," Zuckerberg added.