Instagram announced on 30 September that it is adding an AI creative assistant to Edits, its standalone video app. The assistant uses information from a creator’s Instagram account to answer questions about their posts and suggest changes, The Verge reported. It puts advice inside the place where a video can be made, rather than leaving creators to interpret their performance figures on their own.
Key points
- The Edits assistant draws on account metrics, comments and Instagram trends to offer personalised advice.
- Creators can ask about past videos or request ideas, captions, scripts and audio suggestions.
- Meta says the assistant is free within a usage limit, with more use available through a subscription.
Edits turns Instagram metrics into answers
A creator can ask the assistant why one reel performed better than another, what resonated with an audience or what is trending on Instagram. It can also propose video concepts, opening hooks, captions, scripts and audio tracks. Brett Westervelt, who leads the Edits app, said the tool analyses an account’s audience, performance and platform trends to tailor its responses, PCMag reported. The chat starts from a button at the bottom right of the Edits homepage.
The information it works with includes follows, likes, views, shares, comments and video retention, as well as audience preferences. Retention describes how long people keep watching a video; views alone cannot tell a creator where attention was lost. The assistant brings those signals into a conversation about particular posts and wider patterns. Instagram says it can identify patterns over time and offer suggestions that would be difficult to draw from the figures alone.
Posting a short video could become less a matter of guessing which part held attention. A question about a previous post would bring its viewing and sharing figures into the same discussion as possible changes to the next one. Those changes would remain suggestions drawn from past activity, rather than a promise that the next video would perform better.
Westervelt described a division between analysis and making the video: “Edits Assistant does the digging for you. The creative calls are still yours.” The range of proposed hooks, captions and scripts nevertheless puts the assistant close to the creative choices he says it leaves with the creator. It can suggest what to make and how to present it, even if the person posting decides whether to use the advice.
Meta’s creator tests shaped the Edits release
Meta tested the Edits assistant with selected creators for months before this release. In one example the company gave, a creator making food videos learnt that posts about a desert greenhouse build were performing better than cooking videos. In another, a beauty creator said the assistant proposed adding a 7-second reel among her usual one-minute videos. These are accounts of advice given during testing, rather than measurements of what happened after that advice was followed.
The examples illustrate the job Meta has set the assistant. A list of views can tell someone that two posts differed in reach, but comparing the subjects of those posts and proposing another direction takes an additional step. Meta says its system makes that step using a creator’s own history and audience, rather than supplying the same general posting tips to every account.
Meta began rolling the assistant out to all US-based Edits users on 30 September, Net Influencer reported. The release follows a limited test that Meta previewed at a creator event in Los Angeles in June. Edits itself launched in early 2025 as a standalone rival to ByteDance’s CapCut, amid uncertainty about TikTok’s US operations. Adding account-specific advice gives the app a role beyond editing the video a creator has already decided to make.
Facebook’s Creator Assistant precedes Meta One
Meta launched a comparable Creator Assistant for Facebook in early June. That tool offers conversational analysis of a creator’s Facebook performance and ideas drawn from their presence there. On Edits, the same broad approach connects the advice to Instagram activity: the questions concern what happened to a creator’s own videos, and the proposed next steps are informed by that account’s results.
YouTube has also announced updates to an AI-powered dashboard that advises creators on engagement. Its version includes editing and A/B testing capabilities, The Verge reported. For platforms that hold both the performance data and the tools used to interpret it, such assistants make advice available in the same environment where creators publish. They also place the platform’s reading of an audience alongside the creator’s own judgement about what is worth making.
The Edits assistant is free within a daily prompt limit, according to Meta. The company says heavier users will be able to obtain more usage through Meta One. That makes the limit part of the product’s design: occasional questions can be asked without paying, while greater use is tied to a subscription.
Meta has also previewed a desktop version of Edits, a tab for experimental features and expanded audience information, including demographic breakdowns and times of peak engagement. For the subscription that offers higher assistant usage, Meta One Creator plans start at $14.99 per month, PCMag reported.
