Meta's generative AI head shares details of new Instagram features
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Photo: Chris Constantine/Axios
Two new generative AI filters will make it easy for Instagram users to easily separate elements of images and perform other advanced edits, Ahmad Al-Dahle, vice president of generative AI at Meta, told Axios' Ina Fried on stage at the inaugural AI+ conference in San Francisco on Wednesday.
Why it matters: In the heated AI image-generation battle, Meta has some catching up to do with Adobe, OpenAI, and Midjourney, but Al-Dahle stressed that Meta has been in the AI space longer than most and they've learned to "iterate very quickly."
Driving the news: Meta first announced plans for the two filters (Backdrop and Restyle) at Meta Connect in September, but Al-Dahle says they're rolling out imminently.
- Image generators already exist in WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram messages.
Yes, but: Al-Dahle says Meta's image generative AI has its issues, namely that it doesn't always generate what you ask it to generate. "LLMs are inherently imperfect," said Al-Dahle, but he says Meta's goal is to build better tools that are less likely to delivery "erroneous outputs."
Regarding safety issues with generative AI, Al-Dahle argued that a closed model is not necessarily safer. (Meta's Llama models are partially open source.)
- Al-Dahle defends Meta's product testing which included a layered approach, evaluation benchmarks, and red-teaming, which he says included "thousands of hours trying to expose vulnerabilities in the model."
What's next: Al-Dahle told Axios that Meta plans to let businesses and creators make their own AIs, bring AI onto their devices and make it more efficient and accessible to more people.
