After months of testing during the general elections, Meta has rolled out its Llama-3-powered AI chatbot to all users in India. However, Meta AI currently only supports English and not other local languages.
The company began testing Meta AI in India in April, rolling it out to select users across WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger and Facebook. A few days later, the company officially rolled out the bot to more than a dozen countries, but not India, likely due to the country's general elections at the time.
Meta not only makes the chatbot available to all users through the in-app search bar, but also makes the tool available through the meta.ai website.
Meta AI's functionality is similar to other chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini, and Anthropic's Claude: It can be asked to suggest recipes, plan workouts, help with composing emails, and summarize large amounts of text.
On Instagram, the chatbot can suggest Reels to watch based on your search queries, and Meta AI prompts you in your Facebook feed so you can ask questions related to your posts – for example, if you see a photo of the Northern Lights, you can ask Meta AI for suggestions on the best places and times to see them.
Image credit: Meta
Meta AI can also generate images based on user instructions: TechCrunch found in May that Meta AI was more likely to add turbans when generating images of Indian men, and was also biased in consistently generating old-fashioned Indian homes with bright colors, wooden pillars and stylish roofs.
Meta said at the time that it was continually updating its models, but it's unclear whether the company made any changes in these areas.
“This is new technology and it may not always return the intended response – this is true for all generative AI systems. We have continually released updates and improvements to the model since its launch and are working to make it even better,” a spokesperson told TechCrunch at the time.
Meta will introduce the chatbot to its massive user base of 500 million WhatsApp users in India and hundreds of millions of users across other apps. In WhatsApp, users will not only be able to chat with Meta AI individually, but they can also take the chatbot's help in group chats, such as planning a trip or deciding which movie to watch.
Image credit: Meta
Meta AI doesn't know the context of a group conversation beyond the text you use when mentioning or replying to the chatbot, according to the company, which fine-tuned its model based on conversations with users.
Meta said it's not possible to turn off or hide the Meta AI feature within the app, but you can still conduct searches without invoking the chatbot.
The social media company's rollout comes a week after Google released its Gemini app for Android users in India with support for nine local languages.