Last week saw the debut of a new player in the red-hot artificial intelligence (AI) race: Meta, which operates the world’s largest social networks. The company introduced the AI assistant Meta AI, which will be integrated into Facebook, Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp and will help to use these platforms even more conveniently. Telia’s Center for Digital Advancement shares key innovations in Meta AI.
The capabilities of Meta AI are essentially the same as those offered by ChatGPT and Google Gemini. It can search the web, provide concise results, generate creative images, and turn photos into funny GIFs. However, its main advantage is that it appears in an environment familiar to the user – in the search box of the social network, in the chat window or simply under the posts of friends, in the news bar. In this way, Meta’s social networks aim to replace various specialized AI apps and introduce generative AI to billions of people who haven’t had the chance to try it yet,” says Diana Gold, digitization expert at Telia’s Center for Digital Progress.
Global and the most capable
Despite the fact that the number of Facebook’s user community remains at an impressive three billion mark, its interest in the social network’s posts and the time spent on the app every day are slowly falling. Obviously, only the trendy innovation that Stories and short video Reels once became can stop that. Meta sees generative AI as exactly the kind of “hook” that will offer users new ways to use the social network and reignite the appeal of Meta’s products.
“The company’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, admits that the Meta name is not currently visible among the leaders of AI, but in the near future it is expected to change this with the help of large investments and relying on the user base of Meta networks, which accounts for almost half of the population of the planet. Hearing that the social network giant wants to offer its AI assistant worldwide, or at least where Facebook operates, while making it the “smartest” on the market, leadership seems very likely indeed,” D. Gold is convinced.
The specialist also highlights Meta’s technological breakthrough in the field of AI. Although Meta AI is based on a simpler version of Llama 3’s big language model, the company is expected to release a more powerful version of this AI engine to developers later this year, which was trained on a record 400 billion parameters. The “brain” of the latter AI, according to representatives of “Meta”, surpasses analogues of competitors, including Google Gemini, and is at least equal to “GPT-4” used in the paid version of “ChatGPT Plus”.
From recipes to visualizations of the deepest fantasies
It will be possible to call the Meta AI assistant by clicking on the search box of Facebook, Messenger, Instagram or WhatsApp, by marking “@Meta AI” while typing on the keyboard of one of these apps, or by entering the Meta.ai address in the browser . There we will be greeted by the already familiar chat window, which allows us to communicate with the AI butler as if we were one of our friends. A small blue-purple ring is visible in the search boxes to indicate the availability of the assistant. At least in the near future, the service robot will not cost users anything and will be able to perform at least some very useful tasks.
Unlike competing solutions, it will allow the user to search for information simultaneously using Google and Bing search engines. The assistant can be asked to come up with a dinner recipe based on the provided list of products in the refrigerator, ask for advice on where to invite the other half on a date, or recommend songs for a cozy evening. These features are certainly not evolutionary or unique, but their presence allows you to get the information you want here and now, without leaving the window of a social network app or even messaging with friends.
In addition, it will be possible to continue the conversation started with Meta AI even after switching from Facebook to Instagram or another platform managed by Meta. And in Messenger group messaging, we can even ask the assistant to intervene in the conversation and help divide certain tasks among themselves or organize a joint outing. Finally, various news posts will feature Meta AI recommendations to help you dig deeper into the topics covered in the post or get more context with just a few clicks.
“While the social media giant emphasizes the new robot’s intellectual abilities to solve complex problems, what seems most impressive so far is its artistic talent.” “Meta AI” is able to turn any text we write into a picture, then improve it and thus visualize even the biggest utopias. A hamster running for president, an electric car race on the surface of Mars, a dress made of candy, and similar requests are “exercises” for Meta AI, D. Gold details the capabilities of Meta AI.
In addition to all these abilities, one can also mention the assistant’s good photo editing skills. Before sending or sharing your captured shots, the robot will be able to help you cut out the desired objects from them and paste them on another background. For example, from a photo of us lying on the sand at the beach, it will be able to move our image between a bunch of puppies or clouds. And if sending a picture to your friends is too boring, the AI butler will be able to “make” a short animated GIF.
There is no option not to use
More than one reviewer missed an interesting detail – even if the user decides not to use Meta AI, the assistant cannot be turned off completely. The Meta chatbot will always be waiting for us in the search for social networking apps, and the only application that will give you the option to at least hide the Meta AI button will be WhatsApp. True, it will be possible to delete the conversations with this robot, and this process will be as intuitive as archiving Messenger correspondence with friends.
Meta AI, on the other hand, currently only works in English and only in former British Empire countries. In Lithuania, the “Meta” AI assistant is not yet available either in the most popular social network apps, or after entering “Meta.ai” in a computer browser. However, the company’s ambitions show that the emergence of Meta AI in the EU and our country is only a matter of time. According to analysts, this could happen before the end of this year.
