Finally, the hunt is over. Meta has identified the “most intelligent” AI assistant in the world—in a shocking twist, Meta AI takes the crown! While I can’t (and won’t) vouch for Meta’s boasting, I’m happy to set aside my sarcasm and discuss how the company is expanding its AI ambitions.

Meta joined the AI arms race shortly after ChatGPT exploded in popularity. The company has hinged its bets on an in-house large language model (LLM) called Llama, which has already experienced several major upgrades.

Today, Meta is announcing the launch of Llama 3, an LLM that promises to outperform competing AI in coding and other benchmarks. Two small versions of Llama 3 are now available, with a full-fat multimodal version planned for later this year.

With the new Llama 3 LLM, Meta AI will provide real-time access to information from Google and Bing. Instead of leaving Instagram, Facebook, or WhatsApp to find a recipe, read the news, or look up simple queries, you can do everything within Meta’s social media menagerie. This AI interaction will occur in private chats, in your feed, and in your social media search bar.

Of course, Llama 3 is open-source and may appear in external apps or services. Meta has also launched a new web-based Meta AI client à la ChatGPT or Google Bard.

I’m more interested in Meta AI’s new image-generating capabilities. The AI can now pump out images at lightning speed and provide word-by-word results for prompts. Start by typing “curly,” and you’ll see an illustration of a girl with curly hair. Add “noodles” to the prompt, and the picture will immediately change to fit what you’ve typed. Animated GIF generation is also included in this release, which seems like a fun idea for group chats.

Additionally, Meta AI is now expanding out from the United States and into several other countries, specifically Australia, Canada, Ghana, Jamaica, Malawi, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Singapore, South Africa, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. And while the AI is still limited to English, support for other languages will arrive at some point.

This global expansion, coupled with Meta AI’s deep integration with Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, could help Meta gain more recognition in the world of artificial intelligence. Or, users may simply ignore the AI. Meta’s celebrity-packed AI roleplaying experience grabbed plenty of headlines last year, but hardly anyone gave it a try.

So, we’re left wondering how things will play out. If you can’t wait for Meta AI’s deep social media integration, go have a conversation with the new Meta AI web client.

Source: Meta