Facebook has done a lot to beef up Messenger over the years, most recently giving the service a digital assistant named M. Now Facebook is adding a new photo sharing feature to its popular messaging service.
Photo Magic is the name of a new Facebook Messenger feature that scans your camera roll and, using facial recognition, alerts you when it finds images of your Facebook friends that it recognizes. It’ll then ask if you’d like to share those images with the friends that are in them, complete with a quick Send button.
You’ll need to give Messenger permission to access your photos before you can start using Photo Magic. Once you do, it’ll scan your camera roll for the most recent photo in your camera roll that includes one of your Facebook friends, and it’ll ask if you want to send it to them.
The updated version of Facebook Messenger with Photo Magic included is now rolling out to Android users in Australia, and it’ll hit iOS users there soon. Facebook says that Photo Magic will roll out to more countries in the coming months.
Photo Magic might sound kind of creepy at first, but the app’s goal is to help you actually get around to sending those photos of your friends that you take and mean to share, but then forget for one reason or another. The good news is that you have to actually opt in before it’ll start scanning your photos, so if you’re a little skeezed out about Facebook looking over the photos in your camera roll, you can deny it that permission.