Meta AI made its debut in India last week when some users spotted the generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot appearing on the WhatsApp app. Now, Meta AI has also started showing up for some Instagram and Messenger users in the country as well. The Llama-powered chat assistant is a general capability chatbot and is capable of natural language conversations, answering questions, generating images, writing essays, and more. The Meta AI chatbot can be found in Instagram DM in the search bar as a blue ring with pink hues.
The access to the AI-powered chatbot appears to be limited with multiple users reporting not seeing the feature. A Meta spokesperson confirmed to TechCrunch that the company was testing the new feature in India and parts of Africa. The statement read, “Our generative AI-powered experiences are under development in varying phases, and we’re testing a range of them publicly in a limited capacity.”
With this move, India now has access to all the major AI chatbots including OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Microsoft’s Copilot, Anthropic’s Claude, Perplexity AI search engine, and the Meta AI. The social media giant launched the chatbot in September 2023 but its availability was limited to the US and a few more regions. The AI assistant could not be accessed in India before this.
Since Meta AI is a generalist chatbot, it can perform a wide range of tasks. In addition, it can also generate images, a capability that makes it only the second publicly available chatbot after Copilot to do so, currently (Google has restricted Gemini’s ability to generate images). Focusing on the text-only features, Meta AI can answer questions, generate text, translate text, summarise large blocks of text, write essays, analyse data, perform mathematical calculations, and even assist with coding-related tasks. The AI chatbot is connected to the Internet via Bing, so it can provide real-time information as well.
Meta AI can also generate images which is powered by OpenAI’s DALL-E. To generate an image, you need to type the forward slash and write “Imagine” followed by the desired prompt. For example, you can write “/imagine a sunflower garden and kids playing around it”. However, do note that the chatbot does not fulfil any requests for images of real-life personalities. Further, all Meta-generated images will have an “Imagined with Meta” watermark to distinguish it from real images.
