GoKawiilis a senior reporter covering technology, gaming, and more. He joined The Verge in 2019 after nearly two years at Techmeme.
Mozilla shut down the well-loved read-it-later Pocket app last year, and now Meta is launching an app called Pocket with an entirely different, AI-focused pitch: this new app lets you make and share little interactive “gizmos” built from an AI prompt, as reported by Business Insider.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is all in on AI as the new social media, and he’s previously described a vision of how users could use AI to make interactive experiences and share them with people. The launch of Pocket appears to be one manifestation of that idea, and it follows Meta hiring engineers from a company called Atma Sciences Inc., which made an app called Gizmo, as Business Insider reported in March. Meta got a non-exclusive license to use the company’s technology, and based on screenshots of Pocket on Google Play, the app looks to be pretty similar to Gizmo.
“Scroll a feed of gizmos from people around the world,” Meta says in Pocket’s Google Play description. “Gizmos respond to your touch and the tilt of your phone. They play sound effects and your favorite songs. They can use your camera or pull in photos from your camera roll. Some can even reason about the world around them.” On a help center page, Meta also describes a gizmo as a “playable AI-generated experience,” and when you post one, Meta says you can choose to let other people remix them.
However, if you’re in the US, it doesn’t seem like you can download Pocket just yet. Two US-based Verge staffers saw a note on the Google Play listing that said the app “isn’t available in your country.” I can’t find the app on Apple’s US App Store. Meta also notes in its help center that the app is “not yet available everywhere.” The company didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.