WhatsApp is testing Meta AI, its large language model-based chatbot, with users in India and some other markets, signaling its intention to leverage the massive user base to scale its AI offerings.
The company recently began testing the AI chatbot, so far available in limited markets including the United States, with some users in India, many of them said. India, which has more than 500 million WhatsApp users, is the instant messaging service’s largest market.
Meta confirmed this decision in a press release. “Our AI-driven generative experiences are under development in various phases, and we are publicly testing a series of them in a limited capacity,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch.
Meta unveiled Meta AI, its versatile assistant, at the end of September. The AI chatbot is designed to answer user queries directly in chats and provide them with the ability to generate photorealistic images from text prompts.
WhatsApp’s massive global user base of over 2 billion monthly active users provides Meta with a very unique opportunity to expand its AI offerings. By integrating Meta AI into WhatsApp, Facebook’s parent company can expose its advanced language model and image generation capabilities to a huge audience, potentially eclipsing the reach of its competitors.
The company separately confirmed earlier this week that it would release Llama 3, the next version of its big open source language model, sometime next month.
techcrunch
