Meta Developing AI-Enabled Chatbots for Facebook and Instagram
According to the Financial Times, Meta Platforms is getting ready to introduce a variety of chatbots powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that will showcase distinct personalities as early as September. These AI chatbots, referred to as ‘personas’ internally, are expected to be available on Facebook and Instagram as well. They are said to provide a fresh approach to utilizing search, receiving recommendations, and engaging with social media platforms.
Meta has designed prototypes for chatbots that can have human-like conversations with its users as the company tries to boost its engagement with social media platforms, according to people with knowledge of the plans.
The Menlo Park, California-based social media giant is even exploring a chatbot that talks like Abraham Lincoln and another that advises on travel options in the style of a surfer, the report added. The purpose of these chatbots is to provide a new search function as well as to provide recommendations.
The report comes as Meta executives focus on preserving its new text-based app Threads after the app lost more than half of its users in the weeks following its July 5 launch.
Meta declined to comment on the FT report when contacted by Reuters.
The parent company of Facebook reported a strong increase in advertising revenue in its earnings last week and forecast third-quarter revenue to beat market expectations.
The company has emerged from a bruising 2022 spurred by emerging hype around artificial intelligence technology and austerity measures, where it has laid off about 21,000 workers since last fall.
In July, Meta released a new version of its open-source artificial intelligence model called Llama 2 for commercial use, distributed by Microsoft through its Azure cloud service and running on the Windows operating system.
Bloomberg News reported in July that Apple is working on AI offerings like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, adding that it has built its own Ajax framework to create large language models and is also testing a chatbot that some engineers are calling “Apple GPT”.
