Facebook Unveils New AI Tools, Animated Profiles, and Post Backgrounds

Facebook unveiled a suite of AI-driven features on Tuesday, empowering users to express themselves in more creative and engaging ways across the platform. The rollout introduces animated profile pictures, AI-powered image restyling tools for Stories and Memories, and animated backgrounds for text posts.

As Meta strives to keep its flagship app relevant with younger audiences, these enhancements are positioned to offer a more personalized and dynamic experience tailored to Gen Z preferences.

The new animated profile picture feature brings static photos to life with motion effects, making the subject appear to wave, form a heart shape, or don a virtual party hat. For optimal results, Facebook suggests using a clear, forward-facing portrait of a single person. Users can source photos directly from their camera roll or existing platform uploads. The company has committed to expanding the animation library with more options later this year.

Facebook is also upgrading its Stories—ephemeral photo and video posts—and its Memories feature—which resurfaces past content—with "Restyle." This tool leverages Meta AI to creatively reinterpret the aesthetic of user-uploaded images.

After adding a photo to a Story or selecting a Memory to share, users can tap the Restyle option and either describe their vision with a text prompt or choose from preset themes like anime, illustrated, glowy, or ethereal. Additional controls allow for fine-tuning mood, lighting, and color palettes, and swapping backgrounds for settings like a beach or cityscape.

To make text posts more vibrant, Facebook is gradually introducing animated backgrounds. By clicking a new rainbow "A" icon, users can select from a range of static and moving scenes—such as falling autumn leaves or rolling ocean waves—to help their updates capture more attention in the feed. Seasonal backgrounds are slated for release soon.

With approximately 2.1 billion daily active users, Facebook continues to be a social media titan. Nonetheless, the platform has faced challenges in recent years attracting and holding the attention of a younger user base.

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To counter this trend, the platform has increasingly integrated new technologies like AI and adopted a more youthful visual redesign. Other recent updates include a dedicated friends-only feed and the ability to use unique display names within specific Groups, mirroring a functionality popularized by Reddit. Facebook is also reviving its iconic "Poke" feature by adding a prominent button to user profiles, which sends a notification alerting the recipient.