Meta is testing a new large language chatbot, Meta AI, on social platforms in parts of India and Africa. The chatbot was introduced in late 2023, and began testing on U.S. WhatApp users in March. The test is expanding to include more territories and the addition of Instagram and Facebook Messenger. India is reported to be Meta’s largest social market, with more than 500 million Facebook and WhatsApp users, and has big implications as the company scales up its AI plans to compete against OpenAI and others. The Meta AI chatbot answers questions and generates photorealistic images.

“In the case of Instagram, there’s evidence it’s also being used for search queries,” writes TechCrunch, which received a confirmation statement from Meta indicating “our generative AI-powered experiences are under development in varying phases, and we’re testing a range of them publicly in a limited capacity.”

TechCrunch characterizes Meta as “somewhat late to the game,” where AI is concerned. As the company developed tools offline, it was leapfrogged by OpenAI, which was the first to go public with ChatGPT in November 2022. The current test “signals how Meta plans to tap massive user bases across its various apps to scale its AI offerings,” TechCrunch writes.

TechCrunch describes “user retention” and “investor retention” as two reasons AI is moving now at Meta, citing “its own pride,” as the third reason, having “been setting the pace for so much in areas like mobile apps, social media and advertising for the last decade, and it has outsized talent on its bench, including the celebrated AI academic Yann LeCun.”

Meta is “experimenting with putting Meta AI in the Instagram search bar for both chat with AI and content discovery,” TechCrunch reports, explaining that “the search query in the search bar leads you to a conversation in DM with Meta AI, where you can ask questions or use one of the pre-loaded prompts.”

The New York Times details how “Instagram is pitching popular influencers on a program that relies on artificial intelligence to interact with fans, the latest example of how Meta, Instagram’s parent company, is trying to expand the technology across its products.”

TechRadar contextualizes that “some WhatsApp users have been able to play around with the company’s new AI assistant for a while now, and Meta’s AI upgrade was first introduced in beta in November last year. More functionalities appeared on users’ search bars later in March” in a trial “restricted to people in the U.S. in a limited capacity.”

Related:
Meta Adds AI Chatbot to Instagram That Can Generate Images, PetaPixel, 4/15/24
Threads Is Testing Real-Time Search Results, Engadget, 4/15/24