# Instagram’s Testing Simplified AI Profile Picture Era

Instagram is experimenting with a brand new possibility that may make it simpler to generate an AI model of your profile picture, facilitating a extra stylized, inventive depiction of your self in-stream.

As you possibly can see on this picture, shared by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, Instagram is at the moment engaged on a brand new possibility that may allow you to generate an AI profile image direct out of your profile modifying choices, so you possibly can shortly and simply faucet into Meta’s AI picture technology instruments to replace your pic.

Which might be new for IG, however isn’t actually new for social media customers.

Instagram’s sister app Fb has additionally been experimenting with AI-generated profile pictures, whereas each TikTok and Snapchat have related, of their respective “Goals” and AI avatar creation choices.

So in some methods, this might be bringing Instagram into line with different social apps, in offering a simplified AI profile picture technology possibility.

But it surely additionally feels somewhat disingenuous, proper?

For years, social media customers have complained about bots and bot profiles infecting the expertise, and duping unsuspecting customers with doctored pictures and made-up depictions of seemingly actual individuals.

For instance, earlier this 12 months, Meta eliminated a community of over 900 profiles that had used pretend, AI-generated headshots to depict themselves as actual individuals.

But, now, the platforms are actively encouraging this. And whereas I notice these extra stylized variations of AI headshots aren’t the identical factor, in that they’re designed to allow extra inventive, artistic variations of your depiction, it’s nonetheless not you.

And with anonymity masking the exercise of among the worst actors on the net, and as famous, enabling scammers and misinformation peddlers to dupe individuals inside social apps, absolutely enabling and inspiring using such instruments shouldn’t be actually a profit, on stability.

On the identical time, IG, like each different social app, is eager to include AI components, as a way to be sure that it rides the newest tech pattern, and retains up with the competitors on this respect. I simply don’t see how generative AI instruments are overly helpful in a social media context, when contemplating the core use case of social apps, in connecting people for “social” functions.

AI-generated pictures aren’t an actual depiction of your lived expertise, which is what social platforms have historically been used for. Certain, AI artwork is one other aspect, and showcasing your AI creations is a separate aspect from an inventive standpoint. However the majority of normal customers aren’t artists, and as such, these AI-generated depictions are simply fakes, and it’s odd to see social platforms seeking to re-package these as a constructive, and never simply extra false depictions of their apps.

I additionally get the argument that these instruments are already available elsewhere, and customers can already submit unreal pictures of themselves (like Paluzzi has completed above). So it’s not new, as such. However encouraging extra use of AI depictions simply appears to run counter to what social platforms are all about, and what individuals are in search of in social apps.

However Meta stays satisfied that AI-generated content material goes to turn out to be a much bigger aspect, and it’s seeking to fall into line with that shift.

Will customers really feel the identical?