What is the Meta AI assistant and how does it work?

Meta and its most popular products – Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp – are a mainstay in the lives of most people nowadays, and for good reason. Using them allows you to keep in touch with your loved ones, and check up on your friends, but also spend some time doing nothing to relax and forget about your worries.

Even though these platforms, at this point, practically grow themselves – you really have to be there to be included in many social conversations – Meta is still working on improving them, making them more immersive and even easier and more fun to use.

The latest trend and the most popular buzzword in tech is, without a doubt, AI. So, with all the advancements in this sector in the last few years, Meta is also jumping on the bandwagon and introducing a slew of AI-powered features to its various platforms. The whole project includes a Meta AI chatbot, and the company believes that it’ll revolutionize the way we use social media and interact with others using these platforms.

In Meta’s push to include AI in their products, the step that the company is taking right now is including an AI assistant in their platforms. This is Meta AI – an AI-powered chatbot that works similarly to the well-known ChatGPT, and is available through many apps in Meta’s portfolio.

The idea behind Meta Ai is quite simple. Everywhere you have a chat window, Meta wants you to be able to talk to its AI. The chatbot is capable of both holding a normal conversation with you and also looking up all the things you might need on the web thanks to its integration with Bing. This essentially means that you’ll have access to an AI chatbot right there when using social media, and it works just like chats with your friends – you just open a conversation and start writing.

However, Meta does not stop at this when it comes to its chatbots. Aside from the fully-featured Meta AI, the company is also introducing 28 more AI “characters” that are a bit more specialized. Some of them are based on celebrities, and each has a specialized interest. So you can ask Coco (based on Charli D’Amelio) for dancing tips, or Dungeon Master (based on Snoop Dogg) for your tabletop RPG adventures.

All of these will have their profiles on Instagram and Facebook, and they are tailored to answer questions or queries about their specific interests, making getting to know about something new more interesting and interactive than ever before.

One of the most important and interesting features of Meta AI is the scale on which it is being enrolled right now. Normally, you’d expect such a chatbot to be available in one set place – a website for ChatGPT, a search bar for Bard. However, Meta is doing things a bit differently and integrating Meta AI into all of its platforms.

This means that soon, you’ll be able to start chatting with Meta’s new chatbot when using Facebook Messenger, as well as DM it on Instagram. It’ll also be available on WhatsApp as another chat, but that’s not all. Meta also says that soon this AI will make its way to Oculus VR goggles, as well as Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. All of this is to ensure that if you use a Meta-backed service, you’re just one chat away from its AI assistant.

AI chatbots made quite a stir in 2022, but by now almost everyone is familiar with what they can generally do. However, each implementation of this technology is a little bit different and brings some new features to the table. The same is true for Meta AI.

The biggest thing that Meta’s AI assistant improves on is its accessibility. You get a chatbot in all your social media apps, so asking some questions will be much easier when you’re talking to other people on these apps anyway – you just quickly open a new window and start chatting.

Aside from that, Meta AI can do all the usual stuff – answer your queries, search for specific information and just talk to you about various topics. What’s interesting is that Meta AI will have access to up-to-date info, thanks to the partnership with Bing, so its data will be updated in real-time. Meta plans to introduce specialized versions of its AI chatbots. You can also expect them to be able to talk to you more naturally and with specific personalities, making the whole conversation more natural.

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What’s more, Meta AI will also be able to generate images for you, making it a one-stop-shop for chatting, creating content and getting to know some interesting trivia. You can also add Meta AI or any other specialized chatbot to your group chat, which will allow you to quickly settle arguments and do all the creative stuff that an AI-powered assistant enables.

Meta has been working on its AI project for quite some time now, but if you’re eager to check it out – no more waiting! The company is introducing both Meta AI, and some of its specialized chatbots to WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram right now – provided you’re in the US.

For starters, Meta plans to slowly roll out new characters, as well as expand the access to the Meta AI to their users in the United States, but do keep in mind that the whole project is still a beta version – meaning there might be bugs or other problems. However, if you get access to Meta AI, you can expect it to have access to real-time information, as well as its image-generation abilities, from day one.

There is no news as to when the whole project is coming to other parts of the world. Meta unfortunately also hasn’t yet said when it’s planning to get Meta AI out of its beta phase, but that should not be a surprise – features like these need testing, and sometimes stay in this state for months or even years.

WhatsApp was the first Meta-owned app to get Meta AI working – but there are some caveats. In order to use it, you need to be a part of WhatsApp’s beta program on either iOS or Android, making it quite an exclusive endeavor. It’s also only available in the newest build of the app, so remember to update your software before going to check out the newest AI from Meta.

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Of course, the last thing is your location – you need to be in the USA, and even then Meta AI’s rollout is staggered, so not all the beta testers will have access to it right away. If you’re one of the select few who can use it, you can find a shortcut to Meta AI in your Chats tab. From there, you can either start talking to the AI by yourself or even add it to your existing conversations.

As Meta is really set on integrating AI into its various platforms, an AI chatbot is not the only AI-related feature that it’s working on. There are some more cool things coming soon that might soon change the way you use social media.

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If you love spicing up your stories or messages with some stickers, Meta has got you covered with AI stickers. This feature will make its way to WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and Facebook Stories over the coming month (for English speakers at least) and will allow you to quickly generate custom stickers based on your prompts. These will be easily usable in your stories and DMs, making them really useful for conveying your emotions and customizing your feed.

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The other thing that Meta is working on is AI-powered Image Editing. The new feature uses the groundbreaking Segment Anything Model and lets you ask AI to edit your pictures. Because of the capabilities of SEM, these edits can be quite substantial. They range from quite simple tasks such as applying filters or making collages out of photos, to more complicated things – you can change the background of your photos, or even cut yourself (or anyone / anything else) out and just use that part as your image. Overall, it allows you to quickly touch up an image before sending it to your friends or posting it in your story. These new features will soon be available on Instagram.

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There is one more thing that Meta promises to do soon, and it’s connected to their AI characters – personalized, specialized chats with AI that has a distinct personality. The company created an AI studio, a place where both developers, and complete beginners, can try their luck at creating their AI characters. The company believes that making your own, personalized AI chatbots will be a great boon to your social media experience, and it expects to make the APIs available to developers in the coming weeks.

Overall, Meta really went all-in on the AI train – many features are coming soon, and we’re sure that’s not the end of the story.