Generative AI is a top contender for the biggest technology development of the decade. There are two major fields — we have text-based generative AIs, like ChatGPT, and then we have the kind of AI that makes images, like Midjourney and Dall-E, which are increasingly hard to tell apart from real images.
The latter ones are my favorites by far, because they’re getting more and more realistic by the day. But you don’t really need all that realism all the time. Case in point — WhatsApp is adding an AI feature for beta testers that can generate cute stickers on demand, and it looks pretty cool.
As per WABetaInfo, the latest beta version of WhatsApp for Android phones, version 2.23.17.14, is adding a new feature for generating AI stickers on demand. Once the feature rolls out to you, you’ll see a dialog in your sticker panel telling you about the new option, as well as a button to generate them.
Once you tap that button, you can enter a prompt, and WhatsApp will generate a series of stickers trying to closely match the prompt. If you like any, you can just tap it, and it’ll be sent to the conversation you’re currently in.
It’s not clear which generative AI model this new sticker feature is using, but given its simplicity, we’d guess it’s using Dall-E or something similar. All stickers are generated securely on Meta’s servers, and if you for some reason think a sticker is harmful, you can always report it to the company. The source also says that these stickers will be “easily recognisable” and that the person at the other side of the convo will be able to tell whether a sticker is AI-generated or not. There’s no telling whether this will be a visual marker or notice of any kind, so we’ll have to wait until the feature rolls out to everyone to tell for sure.
