Instagram Previews AI Elements in New ‘Edits’ App

Meta’s coming video editing app is starting to look a lot more interesting.

As you may recall, in the recent scramble to figure out what would happen after TikTok was banned in the U.S., Meta announced its own version of CapCut, the video editing app that’s also owned by TikTok owner ByteDance (and thus, would also be banned under the TikTok sell-off bill).

Edits, as you can see, looks very similar to CapCut, with a range of video editing features that Meta says will be made available for free, with an initial version of the app coming next month in selected regions.

And it looks interesting, at the least.

At launch, Edits will enable users to:

• Capture video up to 10 minutes in the app, and store drafts
• Edit via a playback timeline, enabling more granular control
• Find additional inspiration for their clips, including trending audio insights, and a real time overview of what’s popular in the app
• Record content in higher quality
• Access video analytics

So its initial package is pretty enticing, but late last week, Instagram also released some additional notes on coming features, which could be of even more interest.

First off, Instagram’s looking to add creator collaboration elements to the app, which would enable you to invite others to contribute to your in-progress creations.

Which is another CapCut feature, so it’s not new as such. But it could be a helpful addition, built into the Meta workflow, enabling you to more easily collaborate and partner on your projects.

But the more interesting elements are likely Meta’s coming AI additions, which will expand your creative options in the app.

Like the ability to animate still images with AI:

This would enable you to create all new video content, without having to actually record any video yourself. And while AI video tends to get weirder the longer it plays, it could yield interesting results, which may prove more engaging for your audience.

Meta’s also developing another AI element that would effectively enable you to animate chosen elements of your videos.

As explained by IG chief Adam Mosseri (in a recent Stories post): 

“So imagine you make a Reel, you edit a Reel, and then you can ask for any special effect you want, on either a clip, or the entire Reel. So you could change your outfit, match the lighting, change the background, whatever it is that you need, you’d have access to do. That, I think, is going to come, and it’ll be a little while to get the models ready, but I’m very excited about that.”

Which sounds somewhat similar to this example that Mosseri shared last year:

Using Meta’s Movie Gen AI models, Instagram’s looking to integrate more AI creation tools into a simplified workflow, which would make it a lot easier to bring AI effects into your creations.

And it looks like Edits is going to be the home of that, while it’s also adding simplified green screen, and other editing elements, to help customize and refine specific aspects.

Which could be really interesting, and could provide a lot more creative capabilities.

And for free. I mean, Meta could change its mind on this, but right now, it looks like it’s going to give creators access to these additional functionalities free of cost, in order to maximize the use of its generative AI features.

To be clear, CapCut does also have various AI elements, but they do come at a cost. Which could be another area where Meta could beat it out, and with TikTok’s future still unclear in the U.S., right now is when Meta needs to be capitalizing on that confusion to boost usage.

Either way, some interesting elements, which look to be coming fairly soon.

You can pre-order Edits (coming 13th March) from the app store.