WhatsApp is testing Meta AI, a chatbot powered by large-scale language models, with users in India and other markets. The move signals how Meta will leverage its large user base across various apps to expand its AI services.
The company recently started testing its AI chatbot, which is now available for testing in some markets including the US, and is also being used by some users in India, many people said. India is home to over 500 million WhatsApp users and is the largest market for instant messaging services.
Mehta confirmed the move in a statement. “Our AI-powered generated experiences are in various stages of development, and we are publicly testing different experiences in a limited capacity,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch.
In late September, Meta announced Meta AI, a general-purpose assistant. AI chatbots are designed to not only answer user queries directly within a chat, but also provide the ability to generate photorealistic images from text prompts.
WhatsApp’s large global user base of 2 billion monthly active users provides Meta with a very unique opportunity to expand its AI services. By integrating Meta AI into WhatsApp, Facebook’s parent company could expose its advanced language models and image generation capabilities to a vast audience, potentially dwarfing the reach of its competitors.
The company separately confirmed earlier this week that it plans to release Llama 3, the next version of its open source large-scale language model, within the next month.