After months of testing during India's election period, Meta has decided to roll out its Llama-3 technology-driven AI chatbot to all Indian users. However, Meta AI currently only supports English and does not support other local languages.
The company began testing Meta AI in India on WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook in April, rolling it out to specific users. A few days later, the company officially expanded the bot to over a dozen countries, but not to India, possibly due to the ongoing elections at the time.
In addition to providing the chatbot to all users via the search bar in the apps, Meta also offers the tool through the meta.ai website.
Meta AI's functions are similar to other chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude. You can ask it to suggest recipes, plan workouts, help you write emails, or summarize long pieces of text.
On Instagram, the chatbot can recommend Reels based on your search queries. Additionally, in Facebook's newsfeed, you will see Meta AI prompts, allowing you to ask questions related to posts. For example, if you see a photo of the Northern Lights, you can ask Meta AI for advice on the best places and times to view them.
Meta AI can also generate images based on user prompts, though it tends to add turbans when generating images of Indian men. There are other biases, such as always generating old-fashioned Indian houses with bright colors, wooden pillars, and stylized roofs. Although Meta stated that the company was continuously updating its models at the time, it is unclear whether the company has made any changes in these areas.
Meta has brought its chatbot to India's vast user base, which includes 500 million WhatsApp users and millions of other app users. On WhatsApp, you can chat with Meta AI individually or use the chatbot in group chats, such as planning trips or deciding on movies to watch.
The company states that Meta AI cannot access the context of group conversations beyond the text you use when mentioning or replying to the chatbot. The company fine-tunes its models based on your conversations with the chatbot. Meta says it is not possible to turn off or hide the Meta AI feature in its apps. However, users can choose to search without invoking the chatbot.