In September 2023, Meta announced the launch of a beta version of Meta AI, an AI assistant, in the United States. The chatbot is currently being tested on WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger platforms in India and several African countries.
During the announcement last September, Meta announced on its blog that Meta AI, available in beta mode in the United States on WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, will soon be available on Ray-Ban Meta and Quest 3 smart glasses, a custom model using Llama technology 2 and Meta’s latest research on LLM. Through its research partnership with Bing, it has access to real-time information, its image generation tool can create photorealistic images.
WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger users in India and other parts of Africa can now also test Meta AI from the search bar if they wish, via “Ask Meta AI”. Meta cannot train its generative AI on chat conversations that remain end-to-end encrypted.
Facebook became interested in artificial intelligence in 2013, the year it hired Yann LeCunTuring Prize 2018, for the establishment of the FAIR laboratory (Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research).
Focused on the metaverse, hence the name change, Meta initially lagged behind in the race for generative artificial intelligence. Although he presented his first generative AI models as Make a video 2022 did not initially measure the extent of public interest in chatbots like ChatGPT that appeared late that same year.
Since then, he has been trying to make up for everything on the field. After releasing the open source model Lama in March 2023, he decided to launch his own chatbot and test it on the huge playground at his disposal: his social networks.
Currently, Instagram and WhatsApp have 2 billion active users each, including 500 million for WhatsApp in India, hence the presence of Meta AI on this social network for Indian users who have installed the latest updates.