Have you ever been chatting with a friend and decided to go on a weekend trip, only to have to stop and use a search engine to plan your itinerary? Having an app that gives you recommendations right in the chat would make things so much faster.
This will be possible from Monday when Meta rolls out its Meta AI assistant across all its platforms in India including Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger and meta.ai (website).
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Meta AI, a competitor to ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, is currently available in English in India and says it enables users to learn, create and connect on the things that matter to them.
The company launched Meta AI at its Connect event last year and has been rolling out new versions since April. Meta AI is available in the US, Australia, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Malawi, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Meta AI puts its focus on consumers with the new release. While Meta has developed several AI tools for social media platforms, this launch gives direct access to the power of AI to all users of the platform. So, WhatsApp or Instagram users don't need to download a separate app to access Meta AI.
Gemini in India can be accessed by downloading the app.
Going back to the two friends chatting about a weekend trip, they can just write “@MetaAI” and the option will become part of the chat. Meta says that search options will be available to users using Google search or Microsoft's Bing. In other Meta apps, there is a blue hollow circle, which you have to tap to start a chat with Meta AI.
Meta AI has image generation capabilities across all platforms. When interacting with Meta AI, you can use the term “imagine” to create and share images.
Meta has been testing the tool in India for some time, and company executives said the response has been positive.
“Meta AI is designed to help users and improve their daily lives. In India, we know people are looking for informational use cases. The top use cases we've seen in testing are asking factual questions and getting helpful advice, tutoring and learning support,” Ryan Cairns, VP engineering lead for Gen AI at Meta, said during a part virtual media briefing.
When asked if Meta AI might clash with other platforms, such as Apple and Google, that have their own AI, Cairns said it's in a unique position: “Meta AI is available across all of our apps, regardless of platform. Whether you're on iOS or Android, you can access it on WhatsApp. Right now, our app has both maximum distribution and maximum availability for the end user, which doesn't exist from an OS perspective. Google Assistant works really well on Android, Siri works really well on Apple devices. With our app, we're spread across all of those places and we actually see it as an opportunity to do a better job,” Cairns said.
Cairns said guarding against misinformation is a key aspect of Meta AI. “We update our models every two weeks. We're constantly taking into account feedback from users, including things like hallucinations that are inherent to any AI system. We use this data to train our models to adapt to what we're seeing…” he said. Details of Meta AI's rollout in other Indian languages are not yet clear.
