Meta's ChatGPT competitors include conversational voice chat and social feeds
Meta did not wait for Tuesday’s Cougar keynote to launch its first major AI announcement this week. The company has launched a standalone app that competes with Chatgpt, Gemini, Claude and other multimodal AI chatbots. The app relies on company roots and also includes a social feed, as well as the ability to draw information from your profile and the posts you share.
Meta AI app offers similar features to competitor chatbots, including text and voice chat, real-time web access, and the ability to generate and edit images. But that also includes a discovery feed (for better or worse, adding social elements to your AI query. The company describes it as “sharing and exploring where others use AI.” It highlights tips shared by others and allows you to “remix them to make it yourself.”
Meon stressed that unless you explicitly choose to share them, none of your private chats will be posted to others’ feeds.
For users in the United States and Canada, Meta AI can personalize answers based on the data you share with Meta products. This includes information like your social profile and what you like or participate in. Linking your Facebook and Instagram accounts to the same Meta AI account will provide “an even stronger personalized experience,” the company said. If you don't want it, this may be a good time to check your privacy settings.
The app has a live conversation mode for users in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Like similar features in Chatgpt and Gemini, the Meta version allows you to listen and speak at the same time as the AI assistant, and the natural flow should be more like a real conversation. However, Meta describes it only as a demonstration of “a glimpse into the future”, which suggests it is still in its early stages. This mode also does not provide real-time web access.
The Meta AI web version includes new features for the app, including voice interaction and Discover feed. There are some differences in this release, including enhanced image generation (more presets and new editing modes for style, mood, lighting and colors). The web version also allows you to test (in some countries) rich document editors that can spit out text and image-rich documents to export as PDFs.
The app has partnered with the company's Ray-Ban Glasses with Meta View Companion App. The company said it will include a handover feature that allows you to start a conversation on your glasses and then access it in the History tab of the app or the web. After installing the update, you can manage your glasses in the META AI Applications tab.
You can download new Meta AI apps from the App Store and Google Play.
This article originally appeared on Engadget
