Meta AI is starting to catch up with Google when it comes to AI-powered photo editing. On Wednesday, at its Meta Connect 2024 conference, the tech giant announced that Meta AI will be able to use its AI technology to help you edit your photos and answer questions about the photos you've shared.
The additional functionality is made possible by the multimodal capabilities that Meta AI has enabled with its Llama 3.2 model, meaning that you can now share photos as well as text in chats, similar to Google Gemini and OpenAI's ChatGPT.
When you share a photo, Meta AI can understand what's in the image and answer questions about it. For example, Meta suggests sharing a photo of a flower and asking the AI what kind of flower it is. Or you can share a photo of a delicious-looking dish and ask Meta AI how to make it. Of course, how accurately Meta AI responds to these and other questions is still subject to testing and review.
Image credit: Meta
Another key feature of the added photo support is the ability to use AI to edit images.
After you send a photo to Meta AI, you can ask it to make some changes, such as adding or removing objects in the foreground, changing the outfit, or updating the photo's background in some way, such as adding a rainbow to the sky.
Image credit: Meta
Image credit: Meta
Meta AI can also be used on Instagram when you reshare photos from your feed to an Instagram Story, where the AI technology looks at the photo to understand the image and generate a background to accompany the story.
Image credit: Meta
Beyond photo editing, Meta is also testing translation tools with auto-dubbing and lip-syncing capabilities for Facebook and Instagram Reels, initially with small groups in the U.S. and Latin America in both English and Spanish.
Other Meta AI photo features include expanding Meta AI's generative AI capabilities and the test rollout of Meta AI images shared to Facebook and Instagram feeds to encourage users to try out the feature.
Fine text during the Meta demo noted that the editing feature will be available in the English version first in the United States.
“Meta AI differentiates itself in the space by not only offering cutting-edge AI models, but also providing free, unlimited access to those models that can be easily integrated into our various products and apps,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the event. “That's why Meta AI is on track to be the world's most used AI assistant by the end of this year. In fact, it's probably already there. … We've reached almost 500 million monthly active users, and we haven't even launched in some of the biggest countries yet,” Zuckerberg added.