New Meta feature lets users call using ‘real-time’ avatar
- New feature lets people make Instagram, Facebook calls with avatars
- Meta says avatars are meant to help people express themselves online
- More than 1 billion have been made to date, company said in April
FILE – Attendees visit the Meta booth at the Game Developers Conference 2023 in San Francisco on March 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu, File)
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(NewsNation) — Don’t feel like another video call?
With Instagram and Facebook, you can now use a Meta Avatar to call people on the apps in real-time.
“Sometimes, we’re just not camera-ready,” Meta said in a statement last week. “Wouldn’t it be great if there were a third option between camera-off and camera-on to let you feel a little more present on the call?”
People can take advantage of avatar calls on Android or iOS devices.
Avatars, according to TechCrunch, launched in the U.S. in 2020, after being introduced in in Australia, New Zealand, Europe and Canada. Meant to rival Snapchat and its “Bitmojis,” avatars let people customize a virtual lookalike of themselves to use as stickers, comments, in Messenger chats and now calls, TechCrunch wrote.
Other changes are coming to the avatars, such as adjusting its body proportions.
“No one wants to look like a cake pop, and now, you don’t have to,” Meta wrote. “We’re standardizing the look of our avatars across all our platforms, so the way you show up in VR will match how you show up on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp.”
Other new changes allow people to tag friends avatars’ in Facebook stories and give them the ability to share animated avatar stickers in Instagram and Facebook Stories and Reels, Facebook comments, and one-on-one message threads on Messenger and Instagram.
A new feature is being tested on Facebook and WhatsApp where people can take a live selfie, and the social platforms will give them a suggested avatar generated from the picture.
“Avatars give us a glimpse of the opportunities for self-expression that will be afforded by the metaverse,” Meta said in a statement.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in the past has described the metaverse as a “virtual environment” you can go inside of, instead of just looking at it on the screen, The Associated Press reported.
“The metaverse will help you connect with people when you aren’t physically in the same place and get us even closer to that feeling of being together in person,” Meta says on its website.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
