Meta
When you’re out and about, you’ll likely see one or two people on their phones in a video call. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram (yes, including Threads), among other social platforms, wants to elevate the experience for everyone who can use virtual avatars with real-time face tracking during those video calls. So, what’s the big deal with Meta’s Avatar Calls, and how can you get into one of them?
What’s the history of Meta Avatars?
To understand the concept of the Meta Avatar call, one must go back to the beginning of time. Okay, maybe not that far.
This little tech arms race began with Snapchat making avatars all the rage on mobile by launching Bitmoji in 2016. Quick facial photo scans begat 2D stickers at first, with 3D animations coming in 2017. Early in 2018, Samsung introduced AR Emoji to Galaxy phone owners who didn’t necessarily want to use Snapchat to show off creative interpretations of themselves.
Things really kicked off with Apple that autumn, though: in responding to Samsung by launching Animoji or more personalized Memoji, the rival brand brought millions of iPhone and iPad owners the ability to FaceTime or record video messages using those avatars instead of using the actual camera output.
The devices’ motion tracking abilities allow them to reflect head tilts and facial expression shifts in real-time as the call or video transpires. For ardent users, Memoji and Animoji video calls are a way to be present in them even if their real faces aren’t exactly camera-ready. It’s also a more visually anonymous way of distributing information via video.
Not one for passing up a trend, Meta (which was still known as such in 2019) decided to push its own Bitmoji-like three-dimensional Avatars to the fore. In the years since, these Meta Avatars have been made into stickers and emoji. Meta has spread them for use across sister apps Instagram and WhatsApp.
After an enormous amount of engineering work, we now get Avatar Calls in Messenger and Instagram video calls and all the diverse hardware that links to those platforms.
With these, you can make video calls without appearing on camera—instead, your Avatar steps in and does the heavy visual lifting for you. You can sit in your messy house or with your hair looking like you just woke up, and the people on the other end of the call will have no idea.
How do you start an Avatar Call?
As of press time, Avatar Calls are rolling out to users on Facebook Messenger and Instagram on both Android and iOS. If you don’t already have a Meta Avatar, we have a helpful guide on creating one – it’s pretty simple.
Once that is done, establish a video call on either Messenger or your Instagram direct messages. Select a person or people you want to call, then hit the camcorder button at the top of the screen.
While you’re ringing them up, you’ll see a column of filter options on the left side of the screen. Tap the top one to switch to an Avatar Call.
With the feature in its early days, you’ll only have five avatar options though more will presumably appear in the carousel at the bottom of the screen as things get off the ground. You’ll always be able to use your personal avatar by selecting the leftmost icon.
The avatar resolution is pretty close to trash compactor levels. It is a far cry from Apple’s solution – which it has achieved with its walled garden philosophy to platform development – but it’s a silly way nonetheless to add some extra personality and hide the ugly distractions while you’re getting some remote “face-to-face” time.