Meta introduces the Meta AI assistant and AI characters

Background

Meta's consumer apps, including WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram, reach very large audiences. Meta wanted to offer an AI assistant inside them, which would be a conversational product rather than a research model.^[1]

What happened

At Meta Connect on 27 September 2023 Meta introduced Meta AI, a conversational assistant. It launched in US beta on WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram.^[1]

The assistant used a custom model built with Llama 2 technology. It got real-time information through a search partnership with Microsoft's Bing.^[1]

Key details

Users could generate images in chats with “@MetaAI /imagine”. Meta's Emu image model also powered AI stickers and Instagram's Restyle and Backdrop tools.^[1]

Meta launched 28 AI characters at the same time. Fourteen were played by celebrities and influencers, including Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady, Paris Hilton and MrBeast.^[1]

Meta announced AI Studio, a platform for building AIs, with Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and Quest 3 support coming.^[1]

Image generation in chat means the user types a request and the model returns a picture. Stickers are small illustrations that can be added to messages. AI characters are personas users can chat with. Half of the 28 characters were played by celebrities and influencers. AI Studio, as Meta described it, is a platform for building AIs.^[1]

The beta was limited to the US at first, and Meta said Ray-Ban Meta glasses and Quest 3 would gain support later.^[1]

The launch therefore covered several products at once: the assistant, the characters, the image tools and a platform for building AIs.^[1]

Impact

On 18 April 2024 Meta AI was rebuilt on Llama 3 and expanded beyond the US.^[2]

The launch brought the assistant into messaging and social apps as a US beta. Its later history, including the switch to newer models, is covered in the product entry for Meta AI.