Meta, the social media company formerly known to the public as Facebook, has announced its AI chatbot availability to users in India. This move comes after several months of testing during the general elections. Meta's chatbot, powered by Llama-3, is now accessible to all users across Meta platforms in India.
However, it's important to note that the chatbot currently only supports the English language. The company began testing Meta AI in India in April, rolling it out to select users on WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook. Now, the chatbot is available to all users through the search bar in its apps, as well as on the meta.ai website.
Meta AI Features and Functionality
Meta AI operates similarly to other AI chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude.
Users can interact with the chatbot to receive suggestions, assistance, or information on various topics. The chatbot is capable of a wide range of tasks including suggesting recipes, helping plan workouts, writing emails, as well as summarizing text.
On Instagram, the chatbot can provide suggestions for Reels based on user preference through search queries, and on the Facebook feed, users will see a prompt that can be used to ask any post-related questions.
However, when it comes to image generating, reports revealed that the chatbot was regarded to tend to generate biased images, such as adding turbans to images of Indian men and consistently depicting old-school Indian houses.
Meta responded by stating that they are continuously updating and improving their models to address these biases.
User Experience with Meta AI
Meta's chatbot is now accessible to India's massive user base of 500 million WhatsApp users, as well as hundreds of millions of users on its other platforms. Users can engage with Meta AI individually or within a group chat.
Nonetheless, the company said that Meta AI doesn’t have the context of the conversation available within the text used when mentioning or replying to the chatbot. The model is fine-tuned based on user conversations.
While Meta AI functionality cannot be turned off or hidden in the app, users have the option to engage in a search without invoking the chatbot.
With the expansion of its chatbot availability, Meta aims to tap into the vast Indian market and enhance user experiences on its platforms. By integrating Meta AI into an array of existing apps, users can benefit from the Meta AI tool without requiring the use of additional applications.