Meta has unveiled a set of chatbots for its Messenger service, featuring personalities that specialize in various subjects such as holidays and cooking advice. This development is part of the ongoing competition among tech companies to create more accurate and personalized artificial intelligence-powered chatbots.
The primary chatbot, named “Meta AI,” is designed for use in messaging, enabling users to ask questions and engage in conversations on various topics. It is based on Llama 2, a large language model released by the company for public commercial use in July.
In addition to Meta AI, several celebrities have joined the initiative to lend their personalities to different chatbots, including Snoop Dogg and Kendall Jenner. The goal is to create chatbots that provide not only answers to questions but also entertainment.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that there are still limitations to what the chatbots can do. The chatbots are set to roll out initially in the United States.
During the event, Zuckerberg also discussed Meta’s ongoing commitment to the metaverse, emphasizing the company’s latest virtual reality headset, Quest 3. This headset offers mixed reality capabilities and augmented reality features thanks to forward-facing cameras. Quest 3 will be available starting October 10.
Meta has invested heavily in the metaverse concept, though its VR division has reported substantial losses in 2022. The company faces competition in the mixed reality hardware market from Apple, which released its Vision Pro headset earlier this year.
This announcement coincides with OpenAI’s news that its ChatGPT chatbot can now browse the internet to provide users with up-to-date information, expanding its capabilities beyond data available up to September 2021.
