Instagram’s Testing Simplified AI Profile Image Generation

Instagram is experimenting with a new option that would make it easier to generate an AI version of your profile image, facilitating a more stylized, artistic depiction of yourself in-stream.

As you can see in this image, shared by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi, Instagram is currently working on a new option that would enable you to generate an AI profile picture direct from your profile editing options, so you could quickly and easily tap into Meta’s AI image generation tools to update your pic.

Which would be new for IG, but isn’t really new for social media users.

Instagram’s sister app Facebook has also been experimenting with AI-generated profile images, while both TikTok and Snapchat have similar, in their respective “Dreams” and AI avatar creation options.

So in some ways, this would be bringing Instagram into line with other social apps, in providing a simplified AI profile image generation option.

But it also feels a little disingenuous, right?

For years, social media users have complained about bots and bot profiles infecting the experience, and duping unsuspecting users with doctored images and made-up depictions of seemingly real people.

For example, earlier this year, Meta removed a network of over 900 profiles that had used fake, AI-generated headshots to depict themselves as real people.

Yet, now, the platforms are actively encouraging this. And while I realize these more stylized versions of AI headshots are not the same thing, in that they’re designed to enable more artistic, creative variations of your depiction, it’s still not you.

And with anonymity masking the activity of some of the worst actors on the web, and as noted, enabling scammers and misinformation peddlers to dupe people within social apps, surely enabling and encouraging the use of such tools is not really a benefit, on balance.

At the same time, IG, like every other social app, is keen to incorporate AI elements, in order to ensure that it rides the latest tech trend, and keeps up with the competition in this respect. I just don’t see how generative AI tools are overly beneficial in a social media context, when considering the core use case of social apps, in connecting humans for “social” purposes.

AI-generated images are not a real depiction of your lived experience, which is what social platforms have traditionally been used for. Sure, AI art is another element, and showcasing your AI creations is a separate element from an artistic standpoint. But the majority of regular users are not artists, and as such, these AI-generated depictions are just fakes, and it’s odd to see social platforms looking to re-package these as a positive, and not just more false depictions in their apps.

I also get the argument that these tools are already readily available elsewhere, and users can already post unreal images of themselves (like Paluzzi has done above). So it’s not new, as such. But encouraging more use of AI depictions just seems to run counter to what social platforms are all about, and what people are looking for in social apps.

But Meta remains convinced that AI-generated content is going to become a bigger element, and it’s looking to fall into line with that shift.

Will users feel the same?