Meta Now Lets You Use Your Avatar During Video Calls on Instagram and Messenger

Meta announced today that you can now use your avatar to answer and make video calls on Instagram and Messenger. The company says the new functionality will allow users to take part in video calls when they are not camera-ready. With this feature, you and your friends are looking and talking to each other, without actually seeing each other.

The feature is helpful for those who don’t want to show their faces on certain video calls. On the other hand, it can be seen as a somewhat odd and creepy way to communicate with a friend or family member when you could just communicate via a voice call.

You can now use your Meta avatar in Video calls on Instagram and Messenger

The new feature is available for both iOS and Android users.

Other than this, Meta also shared a few other updates regarding avatars. Meta is testing an easier way to create avatars on Facebook and WhatsApp where you can take a live selfie. You can also receive a suggested avatar option generated from your selfie. You can pick from these options and further personalize them to best represent yourself.

Additionally, Meta now lets you share animated avatar stickers in Instagram and Facebook Stories and Reels, Facebook comments, and 1:1 message threads on Messenger and Instagram. You can send stickers where your avatar is doing certain actions, like waving hello, dancing or slow clapping.

In addition, Meta is rolling out the ability for users’ avatars to hang out with their friends’ avatars in stickers. You can now tag a few friends to Facebook Stories, so you and your friends’ avatars can appear on a sticker together. The new functionality is called “Social Stickers” and lets you share stickers of yourself and a single friend in 1:1 message threads.

See Also: Twitter Threatens to Sue Meta Over the New Threads App