Meta discontinues AI Avatar feature on WhatsApp Messenger

In late 2022, Meta introduced a generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI) feature to WhatsApp that allowed messenger app users to create fun animated pictures of themselves for their Display Picture (DP). It was a precursor to Meta's plan to create curiosity among users to join its 'Horizon Worlds' Metaverse platform.

With the Avatar feature, WhatsApp users would be able to create their own animated DP (Display Picture). The messenger app will offer a combination of diverse hairstyles, facial features, and outfits.

For the uninitiated, Mark Zuckerberg's Horizon Worlds' Metaverse platform was an immersive virtual world on the internet, where people in digital avatars socialise with people around the world.

Steps to create Avatar on the WhatsApp messenger app.

Hollywood Celebrities owned virtual homes by paying hundreds and thousands of dollars. Meta invested close to 80 billion dollars to create an ecosystem including VR headsets, but the initial euphoria died soon after. Since then, Meta has been scaling back on Metaverse and pivoted to smart glasses and AI Superintelligence (an advanced AI tech that can outthink human reasoning capability).

Now, AI Avatar feature is no longer available on WhatsApp. The company's official help page has been revised and has announced that people will no longer be able to create an Avatar and keep it as a DP. However, stickers will be available in the library, which can still be used to send them along with messages like emojis.

"You can no longer create new avatars. Soon, you won’t be able to edit avatars, and they will be removed from your profile. Your existing avatar stickers will still be available to use," reads the WhatsApp FAQ page.

In a related development, WhatsApp is testing a generative Artificial Intelligence (gen AI)-powered feature to summarise unread messages to the user.

With this new multi-chat AI summaries feature, WhatsApp will offer crisp updates on who has messaged and offer a gist of the texts. This way, the user can know important details and, if it is urgent, respond with a call or text message.

This is a tricky feature, as the AI feature needs to get the context correct and not interlink separate messages and come up with a misleading summary. This has happened with Apple's group notification feature.

Meta is taking the right path of testing it and doing more rigorously to ensure the AI summaries get context right.

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