WhatsApp will soon make meta AI applications available. The company announced this at its own Meta Connect 2023.

If parent company Meta is anything to go by, WhatsApp will soon have the numerous applications of Meta AI, the American tech giant’s new artificial intelligence assistant.

Digital sticker album

There are AI stickers for creative minds. Using the technology of the open source Llama 2 model and the Emu image generator, you can transform text prompts into unique stickers. This feature will soon be rolled out to select English-speaking users. This option will not only be available on WhatsApp, but also Instagram, Messenger and Facebook Stories.

Chatterbot

The effective assistant Meta AI goes one step further. This is a bot that allows you to converse like you would with another person. To this end, Meta AI combines (again) Llama 2’s technology with new LLMs. The real-time information in the chats comes through a partnership with Microsoft’s Bing. Meta AI also has an image generation tool that is currently limited to the US.

Just like stickers, Meta AI is not limited to WhatsApp. The virtual assistant will also find its way into Messenger and Instagram and at a later date also in the smart glasses that Meta has released together with Ray-Ban and in the Quest 3, the VR headset from Meta. Meta AI is currently still in beta phase.

Familiar faces

Then there’s a very special application that Meta is bringing to the market: AI personalities played by a range of famous people that you can interact with. There are now a total of 28 of these personalities to talk to, each with their own background and specific character traits, interests and opinions. All characters also have a profile on Facebook and Instagram. Their knowledge is still quite limited, especially information from before 2023. However, Meta aims to improve this in the coming months.

Notable names playing a character include:

• NBA player Chris Paul as professional golfer Perry
• rapper Snoop Dogg as a dungeon master, for fantasy and board game enthusiasts
• NFL legend Tom Brady as Bru, a hiking sports encyclopedia
• Tennis champion Naomi Osaka as an anime fan Tamika
• Paris Hilton as Amber, a detective
• Kendall Jenner as ideal girlfriend Billie
• Former NBA star Dwayne Wade as Victor, a triathlete

More celebrities are expected to be added in the near future. For example, survival expert Bear Grylls is mentioned.

In addition to WhatsApp, you can also contact these models via Messenger and Instagram. This is also still in the beta phase for the time being, again limited to the USA.

In the studio

There’s also AI Studio, the platform that supports the creation of Meta’s various AIs. The intention is to make this available to third parties in the coming weeks to build AIs for its messaging apps using meta APIs. Messenger comes first, followed by WhatsApp.

Companies will be able to create their own AI to market themselves or improve their customer service. It can also be helpful when communicating with customers. WhatsApp is already working on its business side, independent of new AI applications.

If you’ve already started licking your lips over all these digital goodies, keep in mind that the European market may have to wait a while before all of this is available here too. With the Digital Markets Act, the EU has significantly tightened the rules for a number of technology companies, especially for the gatekeepers, which also includes Meta. WhatsApp has now had experience with this. Therefore, it is likely that Mark Zuckerberg and his team will have to tinker with some details before they can release Meta AI to the European public.