Meta continues to experiment with generative AI, this time via profile and post creation tools, which will provide more capacity to try out its evolving AI features.
The first new element is an option to generate your Facebook profile picture with AI.
As you can see in this example, posted by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, Facebook’s working on a new option that would let you generate an enhanced profile image in-stream.
Which sounds a lot like the generative avatar features that are now available on both TikTok and Snapchat, enabling users to create unreal versions of their portrait.
That’s a smart activation, because aside from being an interesting novelty that users are likely to try out, it also acts as a form of in-app advertising for the feature, as more users post these pictures to their profiles.
And you can bet that a heap of Facebook users would do just that.
There’s not a lot of info to go on at this stage, but it does seem like that’s where Facebook is heading with the element.
The next test is a little more controversial, in AI post creation tools.
As you can see in this example, Meta’s also experimenting with an option to generate Facebook posts using AI, with the system able to use your initial prompts to “create content that brings your story to life”.
Which sounds a lot like bot posts, which doesn’t seem ultimately that great for real, person-to-person engagement.
LinkedIn rolled out something similar back in May, and in a LinkedIn context, it’s probably worse, because on LinkedIn, people are trying to enhance their professional reputation, and therefore having AI create your content for you feels a little disingenuous.
On Facebook, it’s probably less about reputation. But even so, it feels like a step towards bots engaging with other bots, which could erode the concept of what “social” media actually is.
But then again, Facebook has also seen a steady decline in users posting original updates in the app, and part of that could be a result of users struggling to explain themselves and their stories, for various reason. Maybe, then, this could be a handy way to help coax more original posts out of Facebook users.
I’m not convinced that AI-generated content is the best use of the technology, but there may be a logic to it, in assisting people to better communicate.
The experiments add to Meta’s growing array of generative AI options, as it looks to keep up with the rising AI wave, and move in line with audience interests.
Again, we don’t have a lot of info to go on with these features as yet, but it seems like they could be the next functional AI tools that you see coming to your Facebook feed.
