Meta will reportedly start testing a new artificial intelligence (AI)-generated stickers feature for its instant messaging platform Messenger.
During a company-wide meeting, Ahmad Al-Dahle, Meta’s vice president of AI, informed that the company will use its image generation model to allow users to make stickers based on text prompts, reported The Verge.
Employees will start testing this feature, before the innovation is made available to the public, as per the reports.
“With AI-generated stickers, our users can have infinitely more options for self-expression, cultural representations, and even trend relevance. Of course, stickers are just the tip of the iceberg,” Al-Dahle said.
He also mentioned that the company is working on artificial intelligence models that are going to transform “any image you want in any way you want,” including doing things like “changing the aspect ratio of your picture” or “turning a picture “into a painting.”
The development comes after the announcement from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in February 2023, that the company was creating a new “top-level” product team which would be “focused” on generative artificial intelligence.
Mark Zuckerberg back then also explained that in the short term, the company would focus on building creative and expressive tools, followed by the creation of “AI personas” to help users in a variety of ways.
Keeping track of the master plan, Meta has now announced new artificial intelligence-focused tools in an internal company meeting.
The company confirmed a New York Times report that employees were given a sneak peek of new products it has been building, including ChatGPT-like chatbots planned for Messenger and WhatsApp.
During the meeting, Meta reportedly also revealed a new Instagram feature that could modify user photos via text prompts and another that could create emoji stickers for messaging services.
Meta faces a difficult road ahead
Meta in recent months had to lay off tens of thousands of its workers, apart from witnessing a USD 80 billion bloodbath in 2022 after a disappointing earnings report. The Zuckerburg-led tech giant has thrown all of its R&D weight behind the plan of pivoting its core business from social media to its virtual reality project called the ‘Metaverse’, apart from devoting over USD 10 billion a year to realise the roadmap.
However, the social media giant’s competitors, including Google, Microsoft, and Snapchat have garnered a flurry of investor attention after announcing launches of generative artificial intelligence products. Meta has to do a lot of catch-up acts, as per the analysts.
The company has yet to roll out any consumer-facing generative AI products, although it announced recently about working with a small group of advertisers to test tools that use AI to generate image backgrounds and variations of written copy for its advertisement campaigns.
The company has been overhauling its artificial intelligence divisions and spending heavily to bring its infrastructure in shape and give it the ability to respond to the changing trends in the tech market. In 2022, reports emerged about Meta lacking the hardware and software capacity to support its AI product needs.
However, Mark Zuckerberg has now told his employees that advancements in generative AI in 2022 had now made it possible for the company to build the technology “into every single one of our products”.