Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, in an announcement on his personal Meta Channel on Instagram, expressed his anticipation for the upcoming feature, stating, "If you're someone who leaves people on read: your day has come."
In response to user requests, Instagram is testing a feature that allows users to disable read receipts for direct messages. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced the feature on his broadcast channel, stating, "You asked, and we listened.
We heard your feedback and have started testing a new feature that lets you turn read receipts off in your DMs. Soon, people will be able to choose when to let others see when they've read their messages."
While Zuckerberg remained tight-lipped about the exact release date of the read receipt toggle feature, he did share the app's latest update, which allows users to incorporate song lyrics into their Reels, similar to the feature already available on Stories.
"Rolling out the option to add song lyrics to your Instagram Reels, just like you can on Stories," Zuckerberg announced. "We've seen people manually add lyrics to reels, so hope this makes it easier to use music to express yourself. Working on more lyric experiences soon!"
In addition to the read receipt toggle feature and lyric integration for Reels, Instagram is reportedly developing an innovative feature called 'AI friend', which empowers users to create their own personalized AI-powered virtual companion.
As reported by TechCrunch, researcher Alessandro Paluzzi uncovered details of the 'AI friend' feature through screenshots shared on X, formerly Twitter. According to these screenshots, Instagram users will have the ability to converse with their AI companion to "answer questions, navigate challenges, generate ideas, and more."