Meta has introduced its alternative to ChatGPT: a new virtual assistant with the clever and thoughtful name of… Meta AI. Love the creativity.
The virtual assistant will be able to do what you’d expect from most chatbots like ChatGPT: pull answers to questions from the internet (in this case, Microsoft’s Bing search engine), and generate images based on your text commands (including creating cute pics of yourself surrounded by puppies for Instagram).
FYI, the image generator it uses is called Emu and Meta trained it using 1.1 billion pairs of photo and text, including posts from Facebook and Instagram. 🙃
Meta AI is being rolled out from today in beta form for US users across Facebook Messenger, Instagram and WhatsApp, and sadly there’s no deets on when it will be released for us Aussie plebes. Boo.
You’re probably thinking, who TF cares when we already have ChatGPT?
A fair question indeed.
Probably the main point of difference here is the fact that Meta AI is already going to be in the apps you’re using as social media. Plus, once it’s (eventually) rolled out for everyone else, you’ll be able to add the virtual assistant to your group chat — supposedly to aid in making travel plans, but you just know that feature is going to be utilised for the utmost capacity of tomfoolery.
Remember in, like, 2012-2014, when everyone was asking Siri all kinds of dumb things and trying to get her to respond to the questions? And how we did that all over again with Alexa?
I feel like it’s probably safe to assume the kiddos also did this with Snapchat’s AI which was introduced earlier this year (I opened my dusty app purely to make it a sexy avatar which I named Robobabe, only to never use it again). And I’m sure history will repeat itself once again, when we can now do this in group chat form.
Another interesting (read: kind of dystopian and weird) development is that Meta also revealed there are 28 AI chatbots in development that will have distinct personalities and be played by celebrities, including a “free-spirited” lass called Sally played by Sam Kerr. Ohhh, the girlies are going to love that one. Imagine the new heights to which they can all take their horny fanfics.
The AIs will all have their own social media accounts and area of expertise (like travel, music) which you can talk to. It’ll look like this:
Other celebs who will play certain AI characters include Kendall Jenner as a “no BS, ride-or-die companion”, Paris Hilton as a “detective partner for solving whodunnits” and Snoop Dogg as “Dungeon Master”. Call me when you get the reclusive love of my life Logan Lerman to play “your soulmate”, and then we’ll talk.
As fun as this all sounds, I would love to know just how much these celebs were paid to be involved.
Because truly, I would quite literally rather sleep in a pit of vipers than allow Meta to use my likeness for a chatbot that people will absolutely abuse.
But hey, that’s just me.
