WhatsApp is testing Meta AI chatbot in India, here’s what it means for users

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In what seems to be a very limited rollout, WhatsApp is testing the Meta AI chatbot feature in India. According to a report by WABetainfo, the platform that tracks upcoming features in WhatsApp, select users in India can now use the Meta AI chatbot.

Meta AI chatbot was announced by the company in September 2023. Meta AI is a new assistant users can interact with like a person. It is powered by Meta’s own custom model and Llama-2. Like most generative AI chatbots, users can ask questions to the Meta AI assistant. It is powered by Bing Search and can respond to user’s queries.

According to the report, there are two ways WhatsApp is currently testing the feature. First, WhatsApp is rolling out Meta AI chatbot into the search bar but only in specific countries. For users in India, Meta has located the chatbot within the top app bar for easy access.

WABetainfo makes it clear that whatever users type in the search bar will remain private and not shared with Meta AI. Unless and until, a user send a text prompt to the chatbot, the information remains private. Furthermore, Meta AI chatbot may suggest some topics of conversation but they won;’t be influenced by users’ search within WhatsApp.

Even with Meta AI integration, users’ conversations and calls will remain private as they are end-to-end encrypted. Meta and WhatsApp cannot access them.

According to the report, this is a limited testing of the feature and will be available to a select few users. You can try downloading the latest version of WhatsApp for iOS or Android to see if you have access to Meta AI. We tried it on the latest version of the WhatsApp for iOS and the feature isn’t accessible. However, it is expected that the feature will roll out gradually to users in the coming months, as per the report.