Meta makes its AI chatbot available to all users in India

After a few months of testing during the general elections, Meta is making its Llama-3-powered AI chatbot available to all users in India. However, Meta AI currently only supports English and no other local languages.

The company began testing Meta AI in India on WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook in April by rolling it out to selected users. A few days later, the company officially rolled out the robot in more than a dozen countries, but not in India, likely due to the general elections being held in the country at that time.

In addition to making the chatbot available to all users through its apps’ search bar, Meta is also making the tool available through the meta.ai website.

Meta AI’s functionality is similar to other chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude. You can ask it to suggest recipes, plan workouts, help you write emails, or summarize a bunch of text.

On Instagram, the chatbot can suggest Reels to watch based on your search query. Additionally, on the Facebook feed, you will see a Meta AI prompt, so you can ask questions related to the post. For example, if you see a photo of the Northern Lights, you can ask Meta AI for suggestions on the best places and times to view the Northern Lights.

Meta AI can also generate images based on your prompts. TechCrunch discovered in May that Meta AI had a strong tendency to add turbans when generating images of Indian men. There were other prejudices too, such as constantly creating an old-fashioned Indian house with bright colors, wooden columns and stylish roofs.

Although Meta said that at this time it was constantly updating its models, it is unclear whether the company has made any changes in these areas.

“This is a new technology, and it doesn’t always give the desired answer, which is the same for all generative AI systems. Since our launch, we have constantly released updates and improvements to our models, and we continue to work to improve them,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch at the time.

Meta offers its chatbot to WhatsApp’s huge Indian user base of 500 million users as well as the hundreds of millions of users of its other apps. On WhatsApp, while you can chat individually with Meta AI, you can also bring the chatbot into a group chat for things like planning a trip or deciding on a movie to watch.

The company said Meta AI doesn’t have the context of the group conversation beyond the text you use when you mention or respond to the chatbot. The company has refined its model based on your conversations with them.

Meta has stated that it is not possible to disable or hide the Meta AI functionality in its app. However, users can choose to search without using the chatbot.

The social media company’s rollout comes a week after Google released its Gemini app for Android users in India, with support for nine local languages.