Mondays rumors turned out to be true, Meta announced at its Connect event on Wednesday that it will release a line of digital personalities built on the company's freshly announced Meta AI chatbot platform. What could possibly go wrong?
Meta AI is a new genAI assistant that will span the company's various properties including WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram (and arriving shortly on the Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and Quest 3). User will be able to interact with it using natural language prompts. The AI is built on a custom model derived from Meta's LLaMA 2 LLM and will pull real-time information from the web using Microsoft Bing.
What's more, the company is also rolling out 28 (!!!) chatbot "characters" meant to address specific niche interests, whether those are specific sports, media, or genre choices. These personalities will be voiced by a variety of modern influencers and celebrities:
The initial batch of personalities will be available to US users starting today, with more performances coming from Bear Grylls, Chloe Kim, Josh Richards and others in the coming weeks.
Since the release of ChatGPT last November, Meta has been relatively slow to release a generative AI chatbot of its own, at least compared to competitors like Google and Microsoft. Instead, Meta has kept its focus on the LLaMA platform, its open-source large language model designed for commercial use, as well as a host of AI-enhanced, multimodal tools.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.