Facebook can animate your profile pic with AI

Facebook is rolling out new AI features that let you animate your profile picture and restyle Stories and Memories. You’ll also be able to add animated backgrounds to text posts to make them pop in the feed. With the animated profile pictures, you’ll be able to give a still photo motion with some preset types of animations, including “natural, party hat, confetti, wave, and heart,” Meta says. Meta suggests using a photo featuring a single person facing the camera with a visible face who isn’t holding anything. More animation options will be added “throughout the year.” [Image: Sorry if this GIF of the feature looks a little grainy. I compressed it a tad to reduce the file size. To restyle Stories or Memories, you can tap on the Restyle button and either type out the changes you want Meta’s AI to make to the photo or pick from Meta’s pre-set options, like “anime” or “low-poly.” And to spruce up your text posts with the new animated backgrounds, while you’re drafting a post, look for an A icon over a rainbow background to pull up a menu of different background styles to pick from, including both animated and still options. Facebook is still a huge platform, with more than 2 billion daily active unique users. But Meta has recently made a renewed effort to make Facebook more culturally relevant again, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying last year that he wanted to “get back to some OG Facebook.” As part of that, it introduced a dedicated friends-only feed that ditches the algorithmic junk.