We knew it was coming, and even if it hadn’t been spotted early in some regions, it wouldn’t be the most outlandish thing to guess at considering how popular AI chatbots have become.
In the case of WhatsApp and Instagram, they both run on Meta AI considering they are both Meta products. They run on Llama 3, Meta’s latest AI model.
The Interfaces
To integrate Meta AI into these applications, a few changes needed to be made. For Instagram, there’s nothing drastic. You just get a dual-function search bar at the top of the screen with “Ask Meta AI anything”.
However, things are a bit more drastic in WhatsApp. You also get a dual-function search bar that says “Ask Meta AI or Search”, but there’s also a new Meta AI button near the bottom-right corner of the screen. WhatsApp has also made a few changes to the overall UI of the app, including a new, more neon shade of green and some slight icon changes.
What you see when you access Meta AI through the search bar is pretty much the same between the apps, but when you tap the dedicated button in WhatsApp, it takes you straight to it.
The Functionality
The actual functionality of Meta AI is nothing new if you’ve messed around with any form of AI chatbot before, including ChatGPT. Once you ask a question, it’ll take a little time as it sends your request to the cloud, but it’ll shoot back an answer in no time.
On Instagram, you get a little hamburger icon in the bottom-left corner, and when you click on it, it pops up a full-screen menu with multiple questions that you can ask Meta AI in a single tap.
It also has access to up-to-date information, as I was able to ask it to tell me about the recent events in Dubai and it didn’t disappoint, even including links to news articles I could read. Chatbots like ChatGPT are trained on information only up to a certain point in time if you don’t pay for a higher tier.
It can also generate images for you when you tell it to “imagine” something. One of the example prompts was “Imagine a fancy bed”, and lo and behold, in a few seconds, I was greeted with an image of a pretty luxurious-looking bed. It does its job, and so far, it seems to do exactly what the others do, which is great.
My Opinion On The Rise Of AI Chatbots
Look, I don’t hate the evolution of technology. In fact, I embrace it. Sure, I did have some reservations in the early days of AI because it seemed like everyone wanted it to do everything for them, including homework and school projects. However, I’ve learned to just embrace the positive sides of AI. For me, it can make it easy for me to find a definitive answer to questions I’d normally have to go digging for.
However, I still don’t know how I feel about every single app trying to find a way to integrate AI into their interface. Sure, if I happen to be using IG, I might find it more convenient to use Meta AI there, but is it so inconvenient to switch to a dedicated app for all of that?
I’m the kind of guy who jumps to delete unused apps on my phone, so maybe that’s why I like things being tidy. Either way, I’m sure some of these apps will eventually phase out their chatbots when they become too expensive to keep running, with not enough traffic.
