Here’s a thing…

Apparently Instagram is experimenting with a new automated “collage” feature that uses images from your device’s camera roll to create collages that you can then share within the app.

As you can see in this exampleshared by a digital marketing expert Lia Habermansome IG users are seeing this new notification in the app, prompting them to create a custom collage of images that they can then share in their Instagram chats.

Here’s another look at the prompt as it appears in the IG chat interface (via Lindsey Gamble):

Currently, the feature isn’t working, so we don’t know exactly what these collages will look like, but presumably this would be another way for Meta to incorporate generative AI that uses your photos as input to create a collage, with each photo artfully placed into an individual frame.

Would that be a good thing?

As Haberman notes, collages are already a hit on Pinterest, and younger users in particular are very interested in these more artistic visual creations.

Pinterest has even developed a separate app to facilitate the creation of collages, and due to the popularity of these creations, collages are now being integrated into the company’s advertising tools as well.

The difference is that Pinterest’s collages are product-based, so they can better reflect a wide range of interests and creative elements. This probably won’t work as well if you’re using photos from your camera roll, but given the wider interest in collage images, it could be a win for IG and provide an easier way to share multiple images at once in your chats.

But again, we don’t know because we can’t see the output yet.

We have asked Instagram for more information about the experiment and will update this post if we receive a response.