Meta is introducing a virtual assistant today to compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT that can serve up answers to questions from Microsoft’s Bing search engine and generate images from text commands.
Meta AI, as the assistant is called, is powered by the company’s large language model Llama 2.
As well as chatting it can generate images, using a new image generator named Emu that Meta trained on 1.1 billion pairs of photos and text, including photos and captions shared on Facebook or Instagram.
The new assistant will be available today for a limited group of US users on Facebook Messenger, Instagram, and WhatsApp. It can be added to group chats and help out with tasks such as making travel plans. The assistant will also be available via voice using new smart glasses Meta will release next month for US users.
Meta’s new assistant and image generator competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT-powered voice assistant and latest text-to-image generator, both introduced in the past week. The social network company trails Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon in launching or upgrading its own chatbot in response to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Meta AI was announced by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at an event today that saw a slew of generative AI updates overshadow the announcement of the new Meta Quest 3 VR headset and a new model of smart glasses.
The company’s other new AI launches include two generative AI tools for photo editing that will be made available to Instagram users next month. One called Backdrop can swap the background for one generated by a text prompt; the other, Restyle, uses generative AI to do things like surround a person with puppies.
Meta did not specify a release date for the image editing tools. The company says that to prevent people from confusing AI-generated imagery with real photos, imagery made inside Meta AI, Backdrop, or Restyle will have some kind of unspecified “watermark.”
Meta also announced a collection of chatbots based on roughly 30 celebrities, including tennis star Naomi Osaka and former football player Tom Brady.
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