Here’s a thing…

Apparently, Instagram is experimenting with a new automated “Collages” feature, that would use images from your device’s Camera Roll to populate collages that you could then share in the app.

As you can see in this example, shared by digital marketing expert Lia Haberman, some IG users are seeing this new notification in the app which prompts them to create a custom collage from images, which they can then share in their Instagram chats.

Here’s another look at the prompt as it appears within the IG chat interface (via Lindsey Gamble):

At present, the functionality doesn’t work, so we don’t know exactly what these collages will look like. But presumably, this would be another way for Meta to integrate generative AI, which would use your photos as input for a collage creation, with each photo artistically placed into a single frame.

Would that be a good thing?

Well, as Haberman notes, collages have already been a hit on Pinterest, with younger users, in particular, keen to engage with these more artistic visual creations.

Pinterest even made a separate app to help facilitate collage creation, while it’s also now integrating collages into its ad tools, based on the popularity of these creations.

The difference here is that Pinterest’s collages are based on products, and are therefore better able to reflect a broad range of interests and creative elements. That’s unlikely to work as well when using photos from your camera roll, but maybe, given the broader interest in collage images, it could be a winner for IG, and an easier way to share several images at once in your chats.

But again, we don’t know because we can’t see the output as yet.

We’ve asked Instagram for more information on the experiment, and we’ll update this post if/when we hear back.