Meta starts testing AI chatbot across Instagram, WhatsApp in India

India is the largest market for Meta's family of apps that include - Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp - with a combined userbase of over a billion monthly users.

Facebook parent Meta is testing its artificial intelligence chatbot Meta AI with select users in India across its suite of products, including Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp, Moneycontrol has learnt.

In Instagram, Meta AI has been made available through the service's direct messaging feature.

A screenshot of Meta AI in Instagram DMs feature

One can access it by tapping on the Meta AI icon in the search bar and interact directly with the chatbot one on one, similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, wherein it functions as a general-purpose assistant that can answer a range of questions, including real-time information.

Along with the answer, the assistant provides a link to Google search results page for the specific query and sources used to provide the answer in a footnote.

One can also generate text and images, summarise long pieces of text, help with writing tasks such as proofreading, editing, translate text from one language to another, create poems and stories among others.

A screenshot of Meta AI chatbot

People can also call in the assistant in their existing personal and group chats on Instagram to get advise or ask questions. For instance, one can ask for recommendations for a group trip, or ideas for dinner party recipes, following which it will offer options directly in the chat. One can type “@” and then tap Meta AI to converse with the chatbot.

Meta has also started testing the chatbot in WhatsApp, with many people sharing screenshots of the chatbot on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter.

“Our generative AI-powered experiences are under development in varying phases, and we’re testing a range of them publicly in a limited capacity” Meta spokesperson said in a statement.

India is the largest market for Meta's family of apps that includes Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, with a combined userbase of over a billion monthly users.

Meta introduced Meta AI in September 2023 as part of the social networking giant's big push into generative AI.

The company said it is infusing these capabilities into its applications — Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger — used by over 3 billion people daily, as the firm jostles to be a prominent player in the AI race with tech giants such as Google, Microsoft, and upstarts such as OpenAI.

Meta AI is powered by a custom AI model that leverages technology from the company's open-source large language model (LLM) Llama 2.