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WhatsApp 'Imagine' Tool Gives Your Avatar an AI Makeover

Upload a photo and ask Meta AI to 'imagine yourself in any setting.'

(Credit: SOPA Images/Contributor/Getty Images)

Meta is reportedly adding new image-generation tools to WhatsApp that will allow you to create AI-enhanced avatars.

As WABetaInfo reports, citing the latest WhatsApp Android beta, the Meta-owned chat app will soon let you upload a photo of yourself and ask Meta to generate an AI version. "Take photos of yourself once, then imagine yourself in any setting, from the forest to outer space," Meta says in a screenshot shared by WABetaInfo.

The feature is opt-in and will have to be turned on in WhatsApp settings, WABetaInfo says. Once photos are uploaded, type "Imagine me" in a Meta AI conversation or tag Meta AI in other chats and tell the AI what you want. (The results may remind you of that "90s yearbook photo" AI trend that made the rounds on TikTok last year.)

For the privacy-conscious, photos can be deleted at any time, and WABetaInfo says Meta cannot read the content of messages because the command "is processed separately."

The feature has no official launch date; look for it in a future app update.

This comes about two months after Meta AI was integrated into the search boxes on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook, and Messenger, as well as meta.ai on the web. More recently, Meta released an update to its "Made With AI" labeling policy after some user images were incorrectly flagged as AI-made when they were, in fact, real photos edited with basic software.

About Jibin Joseph