Meta has finally stepped into the artificial intelligence chatbot race. During the Meta Connect 2023 event on Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced his own virtual assistants and a diverse roster of AI personalities that will redefine user interactions and deliver a seamless, intelligent experience across WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger.
“Today at Connect, we introduced you to new AI experiences and features that can enhance your connections with others – and give you the tools to be more creative, expressive, and productive,” Meta said in its official blog post.
Let’s take a brief look at the new Meta AI and other AI features launched during Meta Connect 2023.
Meta AI for WhatsApp, Facebook and Instagram
Similar to other AI chatbots on the market, including Google Bard and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Meta’s new AI chatbot – Meta AI is a general-purpose AI assistant that can help users with a variety of tasks, such as answering questions, generating text, and translating languages.
The chatbot is powered by a custom model that uses technology from Meta’s Llama 2 and LLM research. Meta has also partnered with Microsoft Bing to allow users to access real-time information and generate images. “Meta AI presents options directly in chat, so you can decide as a group which location to explore.”
The new Meta AI chatbot will soon be available to users on WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, and Quest 3.
Meta AI characters
Apart from Meta AI, the company is introducing 28 other AIs in beta, which are available for messaging on WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. These AIs resemble a variety of characters, each with their own unique background.
To make conversations feel like conversations with familiar individuals, Meta has partnered with cultural icons and influencers to represent and personify some of these AIs. These AI celebrities will have profiles on Instagram and Facebook, allowing users to learn more about them and connect with their unique personalities.
Some of the AI personalities are – Charli D’Amelio as Coco, Dance enthusiast and Snoop Dogg as the Dungeon Master, choose your own adventure with the Dungeon Master.
Meta AI Stickers
Meta is also introducing personalized AI stickers, which will allow users to create personalized stickers for their chats and stories. Powered by Llama 2 and an image generation model called Emu, this AI tool will instantly transform users’ text signals into high-quality, unique stickers.
Meta is rolling out AI stickers to select English-language users on WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and Facebook Stories.
Meta Adding AI Features for Editing
Meta is adding two new AI features to Instagram: restyle and backdrop. Restyle allows users to apply visual styles to their images using text cues, while Backdrop changes the background or view of an image based on cues.
To provide privacy, Meta notes that “images created with restyle and backdrop will indicate the use of AI to reduce the changes so that people are less likely to mistake them for human-generated content.”
In addition to these features, Meta is also launching AI Studio, a platform that will allow businesses, creators, and developers to build AI apps for Meta’s messaging platform and metaverse.
