Meta is scaling up its AI chatbot experiment in India and Africa
After officially joining the AI game in September 2023, Meta has just scaled up its AI chatbot experiment.
Some WhatsApp users have been able to play with the company’s new AI assistant for a while now, with Meta’s AI upgrade first introduced in beta last November. Later in March, more features appeared in users’ search bars. However, the trial was limited to people in the US in a limited capacity.
Now, people in India and parts of Africa have seen Meta AI on WhatsApp. In conversation with TechCrunchthe company confirmed that it plans to expand its AI routes to more users around the world and also integrate the AI chatbot into Facebook Messenger and Instagram.
More platforms, more users
“Our generative AI-powered experiences are in various stages of development, and we are publicly testing a range of them in a limited capacity,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch.
This move perfectly illustrates the company’s desire to compete with the bigger players in the AI space, especially OpenAI and its ChatGPT-powered tools. Moreover, India is the country with the most Facebook And WhatsApp users. WhatsApp monthly usage is also reportedly high in African countries such as Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya.
To check if you have a chosen An, you will need to update your WhatsApp for iOS or Android app to the latest version directly from the official app store. Meta AI will appear periodically for select users who have their app set to English.
Meta begins limited testing of Meta AI on WhatsApp in several countries! Some users in specific countries can now experiment with the Meta AI chatbot and explore its capabilities and functionalities through different access points.https://t.co/PrycA4o0LI pic.twitter. com/BB2axOGnEjApril 12, 2024
Designed to respond to user queries and generate images based on text prompts, the Meta AI chatbot is also landing on Facebook Messenger and Instagram with limited capacity in the US, India and a few more select countries. On Instagram, the intention is to also use the function for searches:TechCrunch reports this.
These signs of Meta AI expansion aren’t happening in a vacuum, either. A few days ago, the company announced plans to release AI models with human-level cognition capabilities.
“We’re working hard to figure out how to make these models not only talk, but also reason, plan… have memory,” said Joelle Pineau, the vice president of AI research at Meta. told the Financial Times when announcing the new Llama 3 model.
The choice is now yours if you want to help Meta accelerate its work towards an even more powerful AI – but do we all want that? Real? – or remain a silent and skeptical observer.