Whether it’s Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger, chances are you use at least one of Meta’s biggest four social media and messaging apps daily. And, if you do, then you’ve no doubt come across Meta AI. 

The tech giant has woven inteligenţă artificială into how you interact on these apps, including helping with posts and editing images. Here’s what to know about the social network company’s AI tools.

What is Meta AI?

Meta is striving to go beyond a basic Chatbot cu inteligență artificială and instead offer a multimodal, multilingual AI assistant that can handle complex tasks. 

The company’s goal for Meta AI is to become your ultimate personal virtual assistant with free unlimited access to its AI models integrated into Meta’s app family.

Beyond its use in apps, Meta AI also refers to Meta’s academic research laboratory. It was formerly known as Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research before the company’s rebranding to Meta in October 2021. It focuses on the metaverse — hence the name Meta — and develops AI technology to power everything from chatbots to virtual reality and augmented reality experiences. 

Meta AI vs. other chatbots

Meta AI isn’t the only player in the race to integrate AI into everyday life. Google has its own tools, like Google Assistant and Gemenii, its free chatbot, akin to ChatGPT. 

While Google’s AI focuses more on productivity like search results or managing schedules, Meta AI is embedded into your social interactions, offering assistance without you having to ask. With Meta AI, you can snap a photo and ask it to identify its details or edit the images with prompting. 

Similarly, Amazon’s Alexa şi Apple’s Siri are task-oriented assistants, and ChatGPT or Snapchat’s My AI help with conversational experience.

But Meta AI goes a step further, blending all those features to make it the “everyday experience,” rather than just a stand-alone tool. And so, while those other utility tools feel more like something you consciously use, Meta AI quietly shapes how you connect with others or create content. (Following zvonuri, however, Meta dropped a new stand-alone app for Meta AI last week, which you can use to chat, search and ask questions.)

It’s almost sneaky in how it seamlessly integrates into social platforms people use daily, making AI tools harder to avoid. By simply typing “@” followed by Meta AI, you can summon the assistant in chats (even group chats) to offer suggestions, answer questions or edit images. 

This AI integration also extends to the search functions within Meta’s apps, making it more intuitive and easier to find content and explore topics based on what you see in your feed — what Meta calls a “contextual experience.” 

Following ChatGPT’s path, Meta AI now has natural voice conversations. It is multilingual, speaking English, French, German, Hindi, Hindi-Romanized script, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. You can also choose from various celebrity voices for the assistant, including John Cena, Kristen Bell and Awkwafina. 

Meta AI is currently available in 21 countries outside of the US: Argentina, Australia, Cameroon, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Ghana, India, Jamaica, Malawi, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Singapore, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. 

Though Meta AI isn’t available in the EU, the company says it might later join the EU’s AI Pact. The AI Act requires companies to provide “detailed summaries” of the data used to train their models — a requirement Meta has been hesitant to meet, likely due to its history with data privacy lawsuits.

Meta’s AI glasses

Meta AI is being integrated into everyday products like its Ray-Ban Meta glasses. These glasses can assist you in various ways, like remembering where you parked your car (woohoo!). 

Starting this summer, you can use the voice command, “Hey Meta, start live AI” to give Meta AI a live view of whatever you can see through your glasses. The glasses can also take actions based on what you’re looking at. For example, you can ask AI to make a call or scan a QR code for you.

You can also use the voice command, “Hey Meta, start live translation” with your Meta Ray-Bans to automatically translate incoming languages, including English, French, Italian and Spanish. Meta’s AI app is now the primary way you can pair and manage your Ray-Ban smart glasses.

Other products include the Meta Quest S3 version of its stand-alone virtual reality headset, which, after the upgrades, are called a mixed reality headset, and Orion, its prototype of holographic AR glasses, which has been in the making for over a decade.

Though Ray-Ban Meta glasses and Quest devices are available across 15 countries, including some European ones, Meta AI is currently available on those devices only in the US and Canada. 

Meta is also partnering with Oakley on a pair of smart glasses coming soon, with a $499 special limited-edition version available for preorder beginning Friday. Those will be followed up “later in the summer” with prices starting at $399 for other models.

Meta’s AI Studio

For now, this feature is available only in the US. Users and businesses will be able to create custom AI chatbots without needing extensive programming knowledge. These so-called AI characters will serve as extensions of themselves or their brands, enabling more engaging interactions with followers or customers.

In full transparency, all replies generated by AI will be marked as such.

Llama, the power behind Meta AI

Llama (Large Language Model Meta AI) is a family of LLMs designed to understand and generate human-like text, answer questions, write and even hold conversations. 

Llama 3.3 is the latest version of this LLM. Released in December 2024, it crammed more power into a smaller size. It’s “an instruction-tuned model.”

“Llama 3.3 is a text-only 70B instruction-tuned model that provides enhanced performance relative to Llama 3.1 70B – and relative to Llama 3.2 90B when used for text-only applications,” Meta said in its release notes.

The Llama 3.3 text-only model comes in a 70B parameter. Parameters are measured in billions, and define how the model processes inputs, like words or images, and generates outputs by adjusting relationships between them.

Meta also plans to release models with smaller parameters optimized for mobile devices and wearables like ochelari. 

How to turn Meta AI off in your social media apps

You can’t completely disable Meta AI across the social media giant’s apps, but you can mute the chatbot if you find it annoying. Here’s how to do it across the different apps.

How to mute the AI chatbot on Instagram

1. Open the Instagram app.

2. Tap the messaging icon in the top right corner.

3. Tap the rainbow circle in the left side of the search bar, and it’ll launch Meta AI:

4. Atingeți i in the top right corner:

5. Tap the Mute bell icon:

6. Toggle the Mute messages option on and choose how long you want to mute them for:

How to mute the AI chatbot on WhatsApp

1. Launch the WhatsApp app.

2. Start a chat with Meta AI:

3. Tap on the Meta AI name at the top of the chat:

4. Robinet Notificări:

5. Toggle the Mute notifications option on:

6. Lastly, choose how long you want to mute notifications for:

How to mute the AI chatbot on Messenger

1. Launch the Messenger app.

2. Tap the Meta AI chat:

3. Hit the i icon in the top right corner:

4. Atingeți Mute bell icon:

5. Then choose how long you want to mute Meta AI notifications for:

What’s next for Meta AI?

According to the company, Meta AI is set to become the world’s most widely used AI assistant by the end of the year. Over 400 million people interact with Meta AI monthly, with 185 million using it across Meta’s products each week. 

And with a new app just for its AI offerings, Meta AI is likely to get used a whole lot more often.