Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, has announced a new lineup of AI tools. Some appear to be rolling out immediately. Others are coming over time. Amongst them is a standalone version of Imagine, Meta’s AI image generation tool.

Imagine has so far been limited to Messenger. The new update brings it out as its own tool. It’s launching now for users in the USA. The company hasn’t said when it’ll roll out to the rest of the world, but I expect it’ll come in time.

Meta spoke about the latest AI updates in a blog post. In it, they talk about the evolution of MetaAI and the potential that the announcement holds for its future. The company is testing a range of new AI-powered features across its Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp platforms.

Imagine – Standalone AI image generation

One of the headline features, at least for creatives, is Meta AI’s Imagine going standalone. This means it goes up in direct competition with services like Midjourney, DALL-E and Adobe Firefly.

It’s powered by the company’s Emu technology. Emu was announced in September. This was when generative AI image features were added to Instagram and Messenger. Emu is the company’s foundational image generation model.

Create and Riff on Images With Friends

As mentioned, Imagine has been limited to Meta AI on Messenger until this announcement. The latest update for this is Reimagine, which… Well, here’s Facebook’s explanation of what it does:

Here’s how it works in group chat: Meta AI generates and shares the initial image you requested, then your friend can press and hold on the picture to riff on it with a simple text prompt and Meta AI will generate an entirely new image.

While it may be just a bit of fun for some, for photographers and models or other subjects, it may become a valuable tool. It’s a great way to experiment with concept art for a shoot. Images would evolve with input from both sides of the lens.

Invisible watermarking is not here yet

Meta says they want their AI platform to be as transparent and traceable as possible. So, they’re planning to implement invisible watermarks on their AI-generated imagery.

The term “invisible watermarks” has been banded around quite a lot by various companies recently. They help to prove how an image was created and that it’s not a real photograph. Adobe already embeds AI credentials with the images it generates with Firefly.

Meta’s implementation hasn’t happened yet. We don’t know exactly when it will happen, either. The company says that it’s on the way, though. Well, technically, they said, “We aim to bring invisible watermarking […] in the future”. They haven’t been any more specific than that.

This is the other side of the authenticity systems being built into cameras. Those systems are designed to confirm that photographs are photographs. Invisible watermarks aim to ensure that AI-generated images are AI-generated.

There are some other new tools coming to various platforms. You can see the complete list on the Facebook blog.

[via TechCrunch]