Facebook has recently introduced a new portrait feature that allows users to create illustrated avatars of themselves. This new addition to the social media platform has generated some buzz and questions around what exactly it is and how it works.
What is the Facebook portrait feature?
The Facebook portrait feature uses artificial intelligence (AI) to automatically generate a personalized illustrated avatar for each user based on their profile photos. The portraits are intended to be fun and expressive caricatures that users can customize and use across Facebook and Messenger.
To access the feature in the Facebook app, users can go to the comment composer or sticker picker and tap on their profile photo. An option will pop up to “Create Your Avatar”. Tapping on this will take users through the process of creating their personalized avatar.
The avatar creator will prompt users to choose various facial features, hair, outfits, and backgrounds to customize their portrait. There are many different options to mix and match to create a unique look. Once finished, users can apply stickers, eyewear, and other accessories to further personalize their avatar.
Users can then save their customized portrait and use it as a profile picture, in comments, Facebook stories, and Messenger chats. The avatar will also be made available as stickers that users can share across Facebook’s apps.
Why did Facebook introduce illustrated avatars?
There are a few key reasons why Facebook rolled out these AI-generated illustrated portraits:
- To give users more visual identity options – The brightly-colored 2D avatars provide a more graphical and playful representation of users beyond just profile photos.
- To encourage more visual communication – Facebook is aiming to shift more communication toward visual content rather than just text. The avatars and associated stickers provide more visually engaging ways for users to express themselves.
- To compete with Snapchat and other social apps – Platforms like Snapchat, WeChat, and TikTok have seen success with similar Bitmoji-style avatars. Facebook wants to keep up with these visual identity trends.
- To showcase AI capabilities – The portrait feature demonstrates Facebook’s continued investment in AI research and development for consumer products.
Ultimately, the goal seems to be providing Facebook users with more personalized ways to visually represent themselves online and interact with others on the platform.
How does the Facebook portrait feature work?
The illustrated avatar generator uses advanced neural network AI developed by Facebook to convert users’ profile photos into personalized digital portraits. According to Facebook, the process involves:
- Analyzing the key facial features in user profile pictures, including face shape, hair style, skin tone, facial hair, eyes, etc.
- Identifying the subject and background elements in the photos using object recognition.
- Generating an illustrated interpretation of the user’s photo subjects as a 2D avatar.
- Allowing users to customize the avatar with different facial features, expressions, and accessories.
- Converting the finalized avatar into personalized stickers and graphics to share across Facebook’s apps.
The AI has been trained on billions of photos to learn how to recreate portraits with illustrations. Facebook says the training process included techniques like supervised learning, reinforcement learning, and adversarial training to optimize the outputs.
User privacy was also built into the development of the avatar feature. Facebook ensures the original user photos are deleted after the AI analysis and generation process. The company states no user data is stored with the illustrated avatars.
What can you do with Facebook avatars?
Once you’ve created your personalized Facebook avatar, there are a few different ways you can use it:
- Set it as your profile picture – Your avatar can replace your real photo as your main Facebook profile image.
- Use it in comments – When commenting on posts, you can select your avatar from the sticker options to react.
- Add to Facebook stories – You can include your avatar in any creative Facebook stories you make.
- Send as Messenger stickers – Find your avatar in your Messenger sticker picker to add to chats.
- Make into a Facebook profile frame – Some avatars have matching frames you can add to your profile.
- Share as images/GIFs – Download your avatar or animated stickers to share across other apps.
Facebook will likely look at adding more utility for avatars across their apps in the future, similar to Snapchat and Bitmoji integration. But for now, avatars are limited to mainly stickers, reactions, and profile images.
What customization options are available?
When first creating your Facebook avatar, you have the option to customize the following facial features:
- Face shape
- Skin tone
- Hairstyle and color
- Eyes shape and color
- Eyebrows
- Nose
- Lips
- Facial hair
- Freckles
- Glasses
For the body and clothing, you can pick:
- Body shape
- Skin outfit
- Hair accessory like hats
- Facial accessories like masks or headphones
- Background color or image
There are many style and color variations to choose from within each option. Once you save your avatar, you can go back at any time to tweak or completely redesign it.
Facebook has also created some pre-set themed avatars you can select as a shortcut, including astronauts, superheroes, and more. But customizing your own look allows for much more personalization.
How is this different from Bitmoji?
Facebook’s portrait feature has often been compared to Bitmoji since they both involve creating illustrated avatars. However, there are a few key differences:
| Facebook Portraits | Bitmoji |
|---|---|
| AI-powered avatar generator | Manually customizable avatar creator |
| Limited to Facebook platforms | Integrated across various apps |
| Focuses just on face and upper body | Full body customization |
| Less style/customization options | Very extensive style options |
| 2D illustrated look | Cartoon 3D style |
Overall, Bitmoji offers more detailed customization tools and integration across more apps and platforms. Facebook’s portrait feature provides a quicker avatar generation experience focused just on facial features and expressions.
What does the future hold for Facebook avatars?
The Facebook avatar feature is still in the early stages, so it’s likely the company will be expanding capabilities over time. Here are some possible future directions for the portraits:
- Integration with Facebook Horizon VR – Customized 3D avatars could represent users in the metaverse.
- Additional styling options – More clothing, accessories, and other ways to personalize avatars.
- Stickers for third-party apps – Expanding beyond Facebook’s own apps could increase usage.
- AR selfie masks – Similar to Snapchat filters, but using your avatar.
- Profile avatars on Instagram – Consistent identity across Facebook’s services.
- Expanded messaging uses – Cohesive avatar messaging like Apple’s Animjoi.
Facebook will have to focus on both improving the technology and finding more utility for portraits across their platforms. But the foundations are in place for avatars to eventually become a standard part of a user’s visual identity on Facebook.
Conclusion
Facebook’s new portrait feature allows users to create fun, personalized illustrated avatars powered by AI. While not as robust as Bitmoji just yet, the avatar generator makes it easy for anyone to develop a visual profile representation on Facebook. And with future expansions, Facebook avatars have the potential to become further ingrained into the platform’s messaging, VR spaces, and visual communication tools.