[SAN FRANCISCO] Meta Platforms released a new standalone artificial intelligence (AI) app on Tuesday (Apr 29) in a bid to compete with other popular chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The AI assistant, called Meta AI, is built on the back of the company’s large language model technology, called Llama, and had been available across the company’s various social apps, including Instagram, WhatsApp and Facebook. With the new standalone app, users can access Meta AI without going through Meta’s other products.
“Meta AI is designed to be your personal AI – that means, first, it’s designed around voice conversations,” chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg said. He described the voice-focused digital assistant as a tool that can help users learn about news or navigate personal issues.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT quickly became a cultural phenomenon after its release in 2022. Now, chief executive officer Sam Altman pegs the tool’s weekly reach at about 800 million users. Meta executives see their chatbot as providing a different experience with its voice and personalisation capabilities, and because Meta AI draws data from the company’s social media platforms.
By tapping data from Meta’s sites, the new AI app will have a baseline understanding of its users’ interests. “You are going to be able to let Meta AI know a whole lot about you and the people you care about across our apps if you want,” Zuckerberg said.
The new standalone app will also feature a social feed where people can post about the ways they are using AI, and will connect to the company’s Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. “This is the beginning of what’s going to be a long journey to build this out,” Zuckerberg said.
Meta announced the app ahead of its inaugural AI-focused conference, called LlamaCon, in Menlo Park, California. During the event, the company also previewed a developer platform it’s creating called Llama API, and new efforts to improve inference speeds and better detect and prevent AI-generated scams, fraud and phishing attempts. BLOOMBERG
