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Instagram Launches Amber Alerts Feature

The missing children alerts will appear in users' feeds beginning Wednesday.

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Macy is a writer on the AI Team. She covers how AI is changing daily life and how to make the most of it. This includes writing about consumer AI products and their real-world impact, from breakthrough tools reshaping daily life to the intimate ways people interact with AI technology day-to-day. Macy is a North Carolina native who graduated from UNC-Chapel Hill with a BA in English and a second BA in Journalism. You can reach her at mmeyer@cnet.com.
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Example of an AMBER Alert on Instagram

The Amber Alert feature will be launched in 25 countries. 

 Instagram

Instagram is rolling out a new Amber Alerts feature on Wednesday in honor of Global Missing Children's Day, which will allow app users to see and share notices of missing children in their area, according to a blog post from Instagram. 

The Amber Alert will be activated by law enforcement and will appear in the Instagram feed of users who are in the local area. The alert will include a photo of the missing person, with other key details of the abduction such as location and physical description, which can then be reshared or reposted. 

"Instagram is a platform based on the power of photos, making it a perfect fit for the Amber Alert program," Michelle DeLaune, president and CEO at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, said in the blog post. "We know that photos are a critical tool in the search for missing children, and by expanding the reach to the Instagram audience, we'll be able to share photos of missing children with so many more people."

The alert feature will be launched in 25 countries within the next couple of weeks, including the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Ukraine, Korea, Mexico and many more countries across Europe, Asia and South America.

Facebook launched an Amber Alerts feature in 2015 and has since posted hundreds of alerts from around the world to help authorities search and locate the missing child.

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