Meta launches consumer AI chatbots with celebrity avatars in its social apps

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Enlarge / Meta's AI characters feature Snoop Dogg playing a dungeon master that dispenses gaming advice. (credit: Meta)

On Wednesday, Meta announced its consumer-friendly entry into the crowded AI chatbot landscape, The Verge reports. During a presentation at Meta Connect 2023, the company said it is launching its own "Meta AI" chat assistant and a selection of AI characters across its messaging platforms, including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger.

Meta's new AI assistant will likely feel familiar to anyone who has used chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude. It is designed as a general-purpose chatbot that Meta says can help with planning trips, answering questions, and generating images from text prompts. The assistant will also integrate real-time results from Microsoft's Bing search engine, giving it access to current information—similar to Bing Chat, ChatGPT's browsing plugin, and Google Bard.

During demos, The Verge says that Meta's AI was able to quickly generate high-resolution images from short text descriptions using an "/imagine" prompt, and the feature will be free to use. While Meta did not disclose full details of the new AI assistant's training, the company said it's a custom model that is partially based on the company's LLaMA 2 language model, released in July.

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