Instagram brings conversational AI assistant to its Edits app for creators

Instagram announced on September 30, 2026 that it is bringing a conversational AI assistant to Edits, its video editing app for creators. The assistant is designed to provide personalized feedback rather than generic advice. It draws on a creator's Instagram metrics -- including follows, views, video retention, likes and shares -- and combines them with comments, trending content on Instagram and audience interests to spot patterns in performance over time and surface actionable insights that are hard to see from metrics alone.

In a blog post, Edits lead Brett Westervelt said the team worked closely with a group of creators while developing the tool. Creators consistently said they wanted a tool that handles the analysis rather than doing the creative work for them. “Edits assistant does the digging for you. The creative calls are still yours,” he wrote.

Usage of the AI assistant is capped, and creators can unlock more usage with a Meta One subscription. Meta first previewed the assistant in June 2026 at an invite-only creator event, where it also said it was working on a desktop version of Edits. YouTube announced on September 23 that it is developing a similar conversational video editing tool, which is expected to be available in early 2027. Based on details available so far, Meta's assistant appears more analytics-driven, while YouTube has focused on using AI to help with the actual editing process.