Meta has finally jumped into the artificial intelligence race to compete against OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Claude. Mark Zuckerberg, Founder and CEO of Meta, recently unveiled Meta AI to the world, an AI-based chatbot that can answer all of your queries. The chatbot is currently available to some users on WhatsApp, and Meta is also bringing it to Facebook and Instagram. Let’s look at the capabilities of Meta AI and how you can use them.
What is Meta AI?
Meta AI is a chatbot developed by Meta which is powered by Llama 3. It is the most advanced large language model (LLM) developed by the company and is completely independent of other AI models like GPT, Gemini, and Claude. Meta AI is trained on vast amounts of data, making it capable of answering any questions asked by the user.
Meta AI aims to bring the power of AI to all users to help them with their daily and professional tasks. It is capable of being your personal assistant that can help the user with almost everything, just like ChatGPT and Google Gemini. In layman’s terms, Meta AI is an automatic version of Google Search that can explore its vast dataset to provide you with a contextual answer.
Meta AI Available Platforms and Countries
Meta AI’s biggest strength is its integration with all Meta services, which includes WhatsApp, Facebook, Instagram, and Messenger. Users of these platforms will be able to harness the power of AI directly in these apps, for free. Here’s how you can access Meta AI in these respective apps:
- WhatsApp: Meta AI will be available as a separate chat in WhatsApp. It can be accessed by selecting the Meta AI icon near the new chat button. Conversations with the Meta AI chatbot will not be visible to your other WhatsApp contacts.
- Facebook: Meta AI will be integrated into the home feed of Facebook. Users will be able to ask for additional information about a specific post on their timeline. The chatbot will then respond to the user with the relevant information.
- Instagram: Meta AI will be available in the direct messaging (DM) section of the Instagram app. Users will be able to use specific prompts to activate the chatbot in a DM chat. The responses can then be shared in the chat, or ignored.
- Messenger: The functionality of Meta AI in Messenger is similar to that of Instagram, where it can be accessed by using pre-set prompts.
- Website: Meta AI can also be accessed on desktops and laptops from the official website meta.ai.
Meta AI is currently available in the United States, Australia, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Malawi, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The company is looking to add more countries soon to this list.
Although Meta AI has not officially launched in India, it is available to a small set of WhatsApp beta users in the country. We can expect it to launch in India soon,
Top Features of Meta AI
In addition to being a general-purpose AI assistant, Meta AI also supports some interesting features that you may not find on other AI chatbots.
Image Generation
Meta AI can easily generate images using text input. The user can simply ask the chatbot to create a picture by providing some context, and Meta AI will instantly generate a relevant image. It can also add slight animations to the photo which can downloaded in GIF format.
Write Code
Meta AI can also write and debug codes. The chatbot understands almost every major coding language such as C, C++, Java, Python, and many others. It is also capable of solving technical queries related to big data, cloud computing, etc. However, it may only provide basic questions and users cannot expect it to write fully functional and in-depth codes, as that consumes a lot of resources.
Translation
Although Meta AI primarily supports English, it can also translate sentences into other languages. However, the bot will respond in English by default to your normal queries.
Get Creative
Meta AI can also help you with creative tasks like essay writing, describing something, or even developing an itinerary for you to a certain place. As Meta AI is powered by Llama 3, it can help you with everything that you can ask your friend for.
Contextual Conversations
Being an AI-powered chatbot, Meta AI can continue a conversation with proper context. Users can keep asking questions without having to describe the situation every time. For example, if you ask Meta AI, “How many runs has Virat Kohli scored?”, you can follow it up with “How many boundaries did it include?” without having to provide the context again.
🚨BREAKING NEWS🚨
Meta is rolling out its first AI chatbot, #MetaAI for WhatsApp beta users.
To access it:
👉 Open WhatsApp and look for Meta AI icon on bottom
right corner.
👉 Tap and open Meta AI inbox.
👉 You can ask it any question or generate any image pic.twitter.com/78HO8zNdxS— mysmartprice (@mysmartprice) April 11, 2024
How is Meta AI different from ChatGPT and Gemini?
The concept of Meta AI is similar to ChatGPT, Gemini, and other AI chatbots where it responds to the questions of the user based on pre-trained data. The differentiating factor between these services is their features. For example, the free version of ChatGPT cannot generate images, and Gemini recently dropped this feature entirely due to accuracy issues. However, Meta AI offers the same functionality.
From a technical perspective, the quality of responses from an AI chatbot depends on the data on which they are trained. Meta is based on Llama 3, Gemini on Gemini Pro/Ultra, and ChatGPT on GPT 3/4 models. Each of these LLMs is developed and maintained by the respective companies, which eventually powers the chatbots.
From a general user perceptive, Meta AI appears to have a massive edge because of its existing large userbase and free availability. However, we can expect the quality of responses to be as good as other chatbots, if not better or worse.
How does Meta AI impact us?
Amongst all other AI bots, Meta AI can have the maximum impact on us due to its ease of availability on WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, directly. Although multiple chatbots are available over the internet, they still require awareness about this technology, especially in tier 2, and tier 3 towns and rural areas.
AI is indeed a powerful tool that can help us to ease our regular tasks. It can also significantly reduce the time taken for specific work. The biggest advantage of an AI bot is the ability to summarize a large set of information in 2-3 paragraphs. However, it’s a double-edged sword that can also be easily misused.
As AI is trained on existing data available on the internet, it also creates a possibility of the spread of false information. It can also be abused in controversial ways over social media, which may even violate constitutional laws.
Meta says that the company has filtered out potentially harmful searches of its AI chatbot. Mark Zuckerberg also recently announced that the current version of AI does not pose a threat to the human world. However, it is still a new technology that needs to be developed carefully.
FAQs
Can I disable Meta AI?
Currently, there is no method to disable or opt out of Meta AI. The best way is to ignore it if you do not wish to use the Meta AI chatbot.
Will Meta AI remain free?
Meta has not announced any paid plans for its AI chatbot yet. However, it is unclear whether the service will always remain free or not.
Who can see my conversation with Meta AI?
Conversations with Meta AI are accessible only by Meta. The company says that this data is kept safe and encrypted. However, it is important to note that your data with Meta AI can be used by the company for data training to improve the chatbot.
