Meta AI brings Hebrew language support and WhatsApp integration to Israel

The launch marks a new phase in Mehta’s efforts to establish what it calls a “personal superintelligence” while leveraging the social media platform’s huge user base. Meta also allows users to connect to external apps like Gmail and Outlook.

At the heart of the assistant is Muse Spark, Meta’s first multimodal inference model. Like its rivals Gemini and ChatGPT, Meta AI can process visual and textual information simultaneously to solve complex reasoning tasks in fields such as science and mathematics.

Users in Israel can now converse in natural Hebrew, edit and generate images and videos from text, send photos such as the contents of their refrigerator or screenshots of conversations, and receive real-time analysis and recommendations without leaving the chat app.

In Israel, the launch of Meta will put it in direct competition with the largest companies in the field. Its main advantage is its deep integration into Meta’s overall ecosystem, but the company’s reputation for digging deep into users’ daily lives to support its advertising business may make privacy-minded users think twice before using the platform.

There are also differences in how the system analyzes queries. Unlike competitors that rely heavily on scanning links from across the web, Meta AI’s answers are based on analysis of trends, content, and community recommendations from Meta’s social networks, including Instagram, Facebook, and Threads. The results may be more appealing to users who trust the content on those platforms.

Meta’s model is designed for wide deployment with cultural and linguistic adaptation in many countries, including the Israeli market, which is considered to be particularly quick to adopt new technologies.

Strict data privacy regulations in the US and Europe have sometimes delayed the launch of similar services, but Meta is now working to expand global access to these tools. In other words, many governments around the world remain wary of meth activity.

For users who want to access AI but aren’t yet sure how to get started, making the Assistant available through WhatsApp could provide an accessible entry point. Meta’s announcement highlights the platform’s potential, but it comes relatively late in Israel compared to other big players.

It’s unclear how well they can compete with leading AI services, especially if they don’t offer anything materially different or unique.