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Last year, Meta announced AI Studio, a suite of tools for Instagram creators to generate an AI-powered avatar based on themselves. Now, the company is rolling out the feature for more people.
Some creators already had access to AI Studio tools for some time. However, the company is expanding the reach to more accounts. It’s still not a massive rollout, though, as only creators in the US are receiving the feature.
Instagram creators can generate AI avatars based on themselves to chat with fans
The AI Studio tools are meant to generate virtual characters based on the personality of an Instagram creator. The creator’s fans can interact with the characters as they would in a chatbot-based service. In theory, the character will respond as the creator would, so it can handle messages from fans on their behalf. This seems especially useful for big creators who receive hundreds of messages and can’t keep up with them all.
The virtual characters will draw on multiple inputs to “learn” how to act. Meta mentions that they can use comments, captions, Reel transcripts, custom instructions (prompts), and even links. The avatars will be powered by Meta’s Llama 3.1 AI model. The company officially unveiled Llama 3.1 this week as its most powerful LLM yet.
The feature will reach “normal” users too
Meta has more ambitious plans for Instagram’s AI Studio tools. The company wants anyone to be able to create their own custom characters in the future. So, it won’t be limited to just big content creators. Meta even said they want to achieve “hundreds of millions” of AI avatars available. However, it’s not yet known when the company will expand the reach of the AI Studio tools.
It’s noteworthy that the content of interactions with the AI characters will be private. However, avatar creators can still tell how many people have used them. Ultimately, Meta has work ahead of it to make its AI characters truly “captivating,” as previous tests with avatars based on celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Kendall Jenner were disappointing.