WhatsApp beta introduces AI assistant to chats – here’s how it works
As part of a recent beta, WhatsApp is giving select mobile users access to Meta’s new AI-powered chat rooms.
If you don’t remember, Meta announced at its Connect 2023 event that it was working on an “in-app assistant” for several of its platforms. The technology works similarly to Bing Chat in that you can ask questions or “have a light conversation” with it. Additionally, the company revealed that you can also give the AI a unique personality, with each character based on a famous celebrity. For example, the Dungeon Master persona guides you through a game of your choosing and has a video feed of rapper Snoop Dogg. However, it will not imitate its speech patterns or mannerisms. It is solely the AI that Meta has developed.
We don’t know when this WhatsApp feature will be officially launched. However, WABetaInfo reports that both iOS and Android users can try out a beta version of the technology. The the former was recently released While the the latter has been available since November 17. In addition to introducing the in-app assistant, the update puts the AI-powered conversations directly into the Chats tab for quick access.
How to use WhatsApp’s new AI assistant
Android owners interested should first join the Google Play Beta Program and install the WhatsApp Beta app on their devices. For iPhone users, we would normally refer people to join the TestFlight beta program. Unfortunately, the WhatsApp Beta on iOS has closed. At the time of writing, there has not been an open space for the past two and a half years.
Don’t worry because we have access to the AI assistant on Android and we’ll show you what it’s like. When launching WhatsApp, tap the green Chat icon in the lower right corner and then select New AI Chat.
On the next page you will see every persona currently available. We select the base Meta AI for now. There, some conversation topics are suggested to get things started, such as: What are the most popular shows on Netflix? The assistant responds by making recommendations while linking to the source. You can see in the image below that it got the information from Ny Breaking’s list of the best Netflix shows. From here you can continue the conversation as you wish.
How to try out WhatsApp’s AI personas
If you want a specific personality, you can choose from several categories, such as sports, pop culture, and advice. In this example we choose the aforementioned Dungeon Master. It gives content suggestions at the beginning, such as creating a playable character in the story. Each persona comes with a celebrity or actor experiencing emotions in real time. You can move the feed to the four corners of the screen, but you can’t get rid of it. It is a fixed value.
Once done, you can find the AI conversations in the main Chat tab of your WhatsApp account on mobile. Or you can even continue talking to the personas on WhatsApp for desktop. They can all be found in the left menu, along with the rest of your chat rooms.
Please note that you cannot create an assistant on a desktop. The update is exclusively for mobile, although conversely it reveals that this feature will be available outside of smartphones in some form. It is currently unknown if this patch will be generally available. WABetaInfo does claim that Meta has plans to expand the AI personas “to a broader audience in the future,” but provides no further details.
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