Meta is an AI image generator
Meta on Tuesday released an artificial intelligence tool that can generate images, the company’s latest push to integrate the technology into more aspects of its social media business and catch up with rivals in the global AI race.
A new AI image model, Muse Image, is available on Instagram and WhatsApp, the company said. Users can generate AI photos similar to what they would normally post, including a beach vacation selfie or a photo booth reel.
“Muse Image acts as a creative partner that knows your world, making it easy to turn your ideas into high-quality visuals,” the company said in a release. blog post. He added: “With one tap, you can restore an old family photo, see yourself with trendy hairstyles or reimagine yourself as a clay figure.”
The company also previewed AI video generator Muse Video. It will be available to the public in the coming months on the Meta AI app, a standalone platform for Meta’s AI chatbot.
Muse Image is the first AI image generator created by Meta Superintelligence Labs’ new AI division. After Meta fell behind in the AI race last spring, CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent billions of dollars revamping the division in an effort to compete with Google, Anthropic, OpenAI and others.
Over the past year, Meta has been slowly closing the gap. But Muse Spark, its flagship chatbot model released in April, still lags behind rivals.
Meta’s release of new image and video AI tools follows the rest of the industry moving to tools that can write code. OpenAI shut down AI video maker Sora in March as the company said it would focus its resources elsewhere.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Threads in addition to Instagram and WhatsApp, plans to invest up to $145 billion in artificial intelligence this year as part of its efforts to transform itself into an AI company. Meta is also increasingly relying on AI to moderate content on its social media platforms and to offer services to customers.
The company is also asking employees to use AI tools to speed up their work as it lays off thousands to help offset technology spending.
Meta’s embrace of AI hasn’t always been smooth. Last month, a bug in AI’s customer service software allowed hackers to attack more than 34,000 Instagram accounts. Internal AI tracking software also damaged morale among Meta’s rank-and-file employees.
Muse Image will replace technology from Midjourney, an artificial intelligence start-up with which Meta previously worked to generate AI images, in the Meta AI app.
Users can tag friends in the app and create “personalized birthday cards, group outing memes or playful edits” based on their friends’ Instagram accounts, the company said. In the coming weeks, advertisers will be able to use a new AI model to create ads.
Alexander Wang, the head of AI at Meta, has publicly said that his AI division plans to release a new high-end model, internally called Watermelon, in the coming months. Watermelon is on track to perform as well as the latest OpenAI model, Mr. Wang said at a staff meeting last week.