Back in June, Facebook introduced us to its Moments app, an A.I.-infused service that helped friends easily share photos they took while together or while at the same event. Moments is intended to be an antidote to all the "hey text/email/message me that picture" nonsense that typically follows a party or vacation.
Now, Moments is moving beyond simple stills: Facebook added a video feature that takes photos and turns them into customizable movies (or slideshows, rather). It sounds a little like Google Photos, in that these Moments videos will select the best photos. Google Photos's Assistant feature can make you slideshows with a soundtracks, and also does a nice job of automatically choosing your best images to create other enhancements like GIFs and panoramas1. Facebook says the photos are chosen based on storytelling. "It's primarily optimized for a diversity of photos so it can capture a beginning, middle, and end of the 'story.' It also chooses a personalized set of photos to select the ones you and your friends are in." Eventually, this will improve to include Liked photos and make sure to keep duplicates out.
Here's an example of what the videos look like:
The update is available today for iOS and Android.
1UPDATE 3:03 PM ET 08/25/15: This story originally said Google Photos's Assistant feature did not include videos, but it does in fact sometimes create slideshows automatically.
