San Francisco, Nov 8 (IANS) Meta-owned Instagram has announced that soon users will be able to turn off read receipts in their direct messages (DMs).

The company is testing a new feature that will give users a choice about using read receipts in DMs.

Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri both announced on their Broadcast channels that the change is currently in testing.

"We heard your feedback and have started testing a new feature that lets you turn read receipts off in your DMs. Soon, people will be able to choose when to let others see when they've read their messages," Mosseri wrote.

However, they did not mention if that option will be coming to Messenger, which also forces users to use read receipts with no way to disable them. 

Meanwhile, Instagram might be developing an 'AI friend' feature that will let users create a friend as per their liking.

According to screenshots shared by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi on X, users will be able to communicate with the AI in order to "answer questions, talk through any challenges, brainstorm ideas, and much more".

The screenshots showed that users will be able to choose the gender and age of the chatbot. Following that, users would be able to customise their AI's ethnicity and personality. For example, your AI companion can be "reserved," "enthusiastic," "creative," "witty," "pragmatic," or "empowering".