Meta intends to play the leading roles in artificial intelligence (AI). A little less visible in recent months than the creator of ChatGPT, OpenAI, and its partner Microsoft, or Google and its competing conversational robot Gemini, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp is displaying its ambitions: “We want to make Meta AI the leader in AI assistants”, explains Nick Clegg, the group’s public affairs director. Meta announces, this Thursday, April 18, a new version of its conversational robot, accessible on its social networks or its messaging services (including Messenger) and, now, on its Ray-Ban connected glasses and through a website, Meta .have. Available in the United States since September 2023, Meta AI is extended to twelve other English-speaking countries.
The assistant will use the group’s new generation of language processing models, called Llama 3, also unveiled Thursday April 18. “We believe Meta AI is now the smartest free-to-use AI assistant”assured the founder and director of Meta, Mark Zuckerberg, in a video message.
“Meta AI is going to be much more visible on our platforms. You can ask him a question by pressing a button in the search bar of Instagram, WhatsApp or Facebook, or by typing @metaai in a multi-party chat with friends or colleagues », explains Mr. Clegg. The assistant can, if necessary, carry out searches on Google or Bing engines. Meta AI will also be accessible in the Facebook news feed. And in the future in Meta Quest virtual reality headsets.
According to Meta, its robot can rephrase a professional email, ask for restaurant suggestions, an explanation on genetics, furniture ideas for a new apartment… Meta AI can generate images (by typing “/imagine” in a conversation ) and, from this Thursday, April 18, show the result live as the query is written by the user, or even animate a still image.
The assistant is now available in English in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, Ghana, Jamaica, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe – and tested in India. More countries and languages will be added ” in the coming months “certifies Mr. Clegg.
Long-standing investment in AI
To try to find a place against the competition, Meta intends to use the power of its existing platforms as leverage. And use the weapon of gratuity. “Our philosophy is the same for all our products: create technologies that are useful to as many people as possible and then think about how to monetize themtheorizes Mr. Clegg. The fact that we have so many users – 4 billion – and that we offer an easy-to-use assistant, integrated into the services people are already accustomed to, differentiates us from our competitors. »
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