Instagram Adds AI Assistant to Edits App, Focused on Analytics

Instagram's video-editing app Edits is getting a conversational AI assistant, and Meta has drawn the boundary in an unusual place: the tool reads your metrics, not your footage. TechCrunch reported the rollout Wednesday, months after Instagram previewed the assistant at an invite-only creator event in June.

Brett Westervelt, who leads the Edits app, described exactly what it sees. "The assistant knows your account's Instagram metrics, things like follows, views, video retention, likes, shares and combines them with your comments, what's trending on Instagram and what your audience is into," he said. The pitch is pattern-spotting across a creator's own performance rather than generic best-practice advice.

The creative side stays out. "Creators want a tool that handles the analysis, not one that does the creative work for them," Westervelt said. "Edits assistant does the digging for you. The creative calls are still yours."

Usage is capped for everyone, with heavier access gated behind a Meta One subscription. It arrives on a busy stretch for Meta's AI shipping, a day after the company wired its Muse agent into tools like Asana and Slack.

YouTube is aiming somewhere else. Its competing conversational tool, targeting early 2027, is built to help with the editing itself.