We’ve all seen it. That new, fancy-looking search bar in our Facebook and Instagram apps. Gone are the days when you can just pop on and type “Harry Potter memes” and get hundreds of thousands of ridiculous, but oh-so-shareworthy memes about the beloved wizard. Now, instead of just looking for Harry Potter memes, we can ask Meta AI to write one for us! 

So, is this huge Meta update good, bad, or just plain ugly? Let’s dive in… 

Understanding Meta AI

Meta, the tech giant behind Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, has recently launched its AI assistant, a huge step in the integration of artificial intelligence into our daily social media interactions. 

What is Meta AI?

Meta AI is an advanced artificial intelligence tool designed to interact with users across Meta’s suite of social media apps. It’s built on the Llama 3 open-source language model and is capable of processing language to provide intelligent, conversational responses. While the generative AI mimics human conversation, offers follow-up responses and engages with users in a variety of contexts, it is still a new technology, and you might not always get what you expect.

Using Meta AI

The rollout of Meta AI has been met with mixed reactions. While there’s nothing like the simplicity of the search bar, we think it’s worth clicking some of the prompted suggestions and giving Meta AI a go. You might be surprised by the answers!  One thing to note though, is that if you click the suggestion for “adorable dog reels” expecting adorable dog reels to pop up on your Discover page, you’d be wrong. One interesting trait of Meta AI is that even if you’re searching for Instagram content, it will open the Meta AI chat window and show the results there. There are also reports of the AI chatbot popping up in groups and conversations, posing as a human, which is more than a little creepy.

For content creators and business owners, there are a lot of upsides to having a chatbot built into the apps you use multiple times a day. From analysing datasets to finding out what hashtags are going viral; the bot does provide ease of access and quick answers for when you’re in a hurry. 

The Future of Meta AI

Meta AI represents potentially the next iteration of social media. Our key takeaways:

  • It presents great opportunities to speed up the delivery of more dynamic and personalised content.
  • If you want to know how something is tracking on Instagram, ask it and it will tell you. From reels to music tracks, it delivers an answer to you in less than 15 seconds.
  • Proceed with caution. Meta AI has made our feeds even smarter. The chatbot takes everything you ask, writes it on a post-it note and keeps it in its back pocket forever (not literally, but you know what we mean).
  • Meta AI is still a chatbot, so ensure you fact-check its results and avoid the spreading of misinformation.

Meta’s investment in AI technology shows its commitment to improving user engagement and satisfaction. We expect continuous advancements of the chatbot that will enhance the relevance and quality of content shown to users, driving growth and user satisfaction.