Facebook is rolling out a new, Meta AI-powered feature that will allow users to animate their profile pictures.

Was the online public necessarily clamoring for Facebook profile pictures that waved via AI? Well…not really. But it’s here nonetheless.

Users will have access to preset animations that will turn a photo into an AI-powered, GIF-like moving profile picture. Wrote Facebook in a press release:

“You can now animate your profile picture, turning a still photo into a playful animation in seconds. Choose from preset animations — like natural, party hat, confetti, wave, and heart — to bring your profile picture to life depending on how you’re feeling. We’ll add more animation options throughout the year so you can celebrate and express yourself during seasonal moments and special events.

For the best results, we recommend using a photo that features a single person facing the camera with their face clearly visible, and not holding other objects. You can select photos to animate directly from your camera roll or choose photos you’ve already uploaded to Facebook. Once a photo is animated, you can share it to your Feed and view it on your profile.”

How the animation process looks.
Credit: Meta

Is it the coolest thing to animate your profile picture to make it look like you’re making a heart with your hands? Not really. But honestly, I can imagine a kooky aunt or uncle loving it. And kooky aunts and uncles love Facebook as much as they love AI photos and images.

Facebook also announced it had added a “restyle” feature that uses AI to touch-up or change photos in Stories. So, a normal photo with a friend, for instance, could be reimagined to look like an illustration. The restyle feature has preset options and can also reimagine a photo based on a text prompt.

The dating app Bumble has been known for “women making the first move” (messaging first) in straight matches since its 2014 launch. Now the company is reversing a more recent change to let men message first — but only in a couple of areas.

Last week, Bumble announced that it’s removing the Opening Moves feature in Mexico and Australia. The feature has been removed automatically for those users.

Opening Moves was introduced in 2024 as a way for men to send the first message to women and was advertised as a way to lessen exhaustion with dating apps. The company’s former CEO Lidiane Jones led the charge after taking over from founder and first CEO Whitney Wolfe Herd, who shortly thereafter returned to the CEO role after Jones held the position for only a year.

While the reputation of dating apps overall has been slipping in recent years due to burnout and bad actors, Bumble has been especially hit financially. The company laid off 30 percent of its workforce last year, and its stock price has fallen 95 percent from its IPO as of this writing.

Don’t miss out on our latest stories: Add Mashable as a trusted news source in Google.

Bumble seems to be returning to its original ethos even amid legal challenges. The Observer reported Bumble introduced Opening Moves following lawsuits and legal threats in California, claiming that the app discriminated against men, according to sources familiar with the matter. The Observer states that the company is starting to remove Opening Moves in Australia and Mexico due to lower legal risks in those markets.

“At Bumble, we regularly test and innovate our features to foster healthy, respectful connections while staying true to our women-first mission and prioritizing member safety,” a Bumble spokesperson told Mashable. “Supporting our community as they go from match to message is a key part of that work. As with all testing, we evaluate our learnings before considering a wider rollout, ensuring any changes continue to meet our community’s needs and deliver a positive experience for our members.”

Our long national nightmare is over. We finally know when Samsung is going to show off the Galaxy S26 lineup.

The Korean tech giant confirmed that the next Galaxy Unpacked livestream will take place on Wednesday, Feb. 25 at 10 a.m. PT (9 a.m. ET). The event is in San Francisco this year, and it’s widely expected that Samsung will show off three new Galaxy S26 phones.

As per usual, you can watch the event on Samsung’s website or Samsung’s YouTube channel.

Mashable will be at the event and reporting live on all of the announcements, so keep checking back for the latest updates on Galaxy Unpacked.

Hosting the event this late in February is highly unusual for Samsung, which usually launches its next-gen Galaxy phones in January. It’s not really clear why Samsung took as long as it did to put Unpacked together this year, as it doesn’t seem like the S26 lineup is doing anything too wild to shake up the formula, though production delays and the global memory shortage may be factors.

All reports point to the usual lineup (S26, S26 Plus, and S26 Ultra) returning this year, with typical upgrades like a newer processor and bigger batteries.

It also wouldn’t be surprising to see some camera upgrades or new AI features, and we’ve already reported on a ton of S26-related leaks and rumors. We’ll all find out together in a couple of weeks.