WhatsApp grants Meta AI access to select users in India

The popular instant messaging and voiceover-IP service WhatsApp is unveiling a generative AI-enabled feature for the India market. Currently available to select users in the country, the Meta AI feature is a generative artificial intelligence-based chatbot that lets users ask questions on various subjects and also offers prompts.

Select users who have been granted access to the Meta AI chatbot would find its icon in the top right corner of the WhatsApp screen on mobile phones, next to the Camera and the Plus sign that denotes a new chat.

According to WhatsApp, Meta AI only communicates with and gives answers to chats that use the word “@MetaAI”. While initiating a chat with Meta AI, the user first gets this notification: “Messages from Meta AI and other characters are generated by artificial intelligence (AI) using a service from Meta, in response to the prompts you send to the AI.” The service further notifies that “personal messages and calls remain end-to-end encrypted” as always, which means “not even WhatsApp or Meta can see or listen to them”.

To chat with Meta AI after hitting the round icon on the top right corner of the screen, the user would first have to read and accept terms if asked to do so and then choose a suggested prompt or type a specific one. Following this, the user would have to hit the Send button in order to start a chat with the bot.

WhatsApp has given a provision for user feedback on the service, too, with the option to select Good Response or Bad Response along with a reason.

Meta AI is a feature that only operates in English language as of now and is therefore available in select countries. The chatbot uses Large Language Model Meta AI (Llama) and is reminiscent of the Cortana assistant feature that Microsoft provides.

WhatsApp introduced a section in the Chats list a while back that can assist the user by suggesting contacts to start a new chat. The feature can be downloaded from the Google Play Store and is available on WhatsApp beta for Android 2.24.9.5 update.

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