Meta’s First Image Generator, Emu, Will Introduce AI-Generated Stickers to Its Chat Apps

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg painted a new picture for chats at Meta Connect 2023 on Wednesday by announcing Meta’s first image generator, Emu, which stands for "expressive media universe."

Emu continues not only Meta’s animal theme, after its Llama language models, but also integrates with Meta’s other product offerings, like WhatsApp, Instagram, Threads and Messenger. Meta wants to build Emu into existing chat offerings so that users can access it to create AI-generated stickers on the spot. 

It takes "5 seconds" to generate an image with Emu, according to Zuckerberg, although he joked that this was still not fast enough for his children. 

Meta plans to integrate Emu with Meta AI, its basic assistant currently in beta, so that users can generate images and responses from the AI bot. The company is in this for the long haul, with plans to build out integration "over the next months and years," according to Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg says that Meta is deliberately taking a slower approach to AI and that he is “really optimistic” about its impact. 

“This has been an amazing year for AI,” he said. “This is really just the beginning. Most people haven’t yet had the chance to experience these LLM or these AI advances.”

Meta plans to broadly roll out Emu to its chat offerings this month.