After expanding its Edits app to macOS last week, Instagram’s next step is to launch this Effect Builder that generates custom filters for your Stories posts with AI. Available now to US residents 18+, it has a prompt box to describe your filter idea to the chatbot, with an option to attach style reference images.
You can then upload your own photos to preview AI-generated effects and request changes to tracking prompts. There’s also an option to let Instagram’s AI rewrite your message, which turned my one-line test message “Create a filter that turns photos into comic book pages” into several AI-generated paragraphs of detailed style requests on everything from color palette to lighting. The Effect Builder filter generated as a result still looked almost identical to its output for my original phrase.
You can send your filters to Instagram directly from Effect Builder, but effects must pass a security review before they are available to other users. Instagram says that after an effect is approved, “it appears in Instagram Stories so anyone can use it, and every time someone uses your effect, we’ll link it to your profile so it’s easy for others to find your work.”
