WhatsApp Shows Instant AI Image Generation That Outdoes iMessage

Meta, parent company to WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook, is introducing a new assistant, Meta AI. It means you can use WhatsApp, for instance, in a whole new way. It’s currently in beta, but it’s on its way. And it’s something that the iPhone’s iMessage app doesn’t match.

The company says, “With Meta Llama 3, we believe Meta AI is now the most intelligent AI assistant you can use for free – and it’s available in more countries across our apps to help you plan dinner based on what’s in your fridge, study for your test and so much more.”

One of the coolest ways this will be expressed is in image creation. In the example Meta sharedyesterday, it shows how to “Spark your creativity with Meta AI’s Imagine feature,” Here’s how it works: suppose you start typing a sentence like Imagine a soccer game on Mars. As you go through the individual words, pictures appear in quick succession, showing first images of soccer games, then resolving to pictures with a suitably red, sandy background. It’s very impressive, and, in Meta’s example, mind-bogglingly quick.

Right now, the changes are for U.S. users. Meta says, “We’re making image generation faster, so you can create images from text in real-time using Meta AI’s Imagine feature. We’re starting to roll this out today in beta on WhatsApp and the Meta AI web experience in the US.”

If you have access to the beta, you can try this yourself (choose your own planet, sport or other topic, of course). Key to it all is triggering the prompt by using “imagine” as your first word.

Meta says the images “are also now sharper and higher quality, with a better ability to include text in images.”

Meta AI, it’s claimed, will also come up with “helpful prompts with ideas to change the image, so you can keep iterating from that initial starting point.”

What’s more, it can take an image you love and animate it, turn it into a gif and more.

Some of these features using Meta AI are available in WhatsApp, Facebook, Messenger and Instagram outside the U.S. Meta AI is being rolled out, in English, in Australia, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Malawi, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

As mentioned above, though, the Imagine feature, , is currently just for WhatsApp and the Meta AI web experience in the U.S.

We all know AI can do crazily impressive things. What’s new and urgently important here is that it’s available for free in an app the people use all the time. And that’s a ground-breaking change.