Meta existIndiaAfter a few months of testing during the general election, Meta AI decided to roll out its Llama-3 technology-powered AI chatbot to all Indian users. However, Meta AI currently only supports English and not other local languages.
The company started testing Meta AI in India in April on WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, and Facebook by rolling it out to select users. A few days later, the company officially rolled out the bot to more than a dozen countries, but not India, possibly because India was going through a general election at the time.
In addition to making the chatbot available to all users through the app’s search bar, Meta also makes the tool available through the meta.ai website.
Meta AI functions similarly to other chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude. You can ask it to suggest recipes, plan a workout, help you write an email, or summarize a long paragraph of text.
On Instagram, the chatbot can suggest Reels to watch based on your search query. Also, in Facebook News Feed, you’ll see Meta AI prompts so you can ask questions related to the post. For example, if you see a photo of the Aurora Borealis, you can ask Meta AI for recommendations on the best places and times to see them.
Meta AI can also generate images based on user prompts, but tends to add turbans when generating images of Indian men. There are other biases, such as always generating old-style Indian houses with bright colors, wooden pillars, and stylized roofs. Although Meta said at the time that the company was constantly updating its model, it is unclear whether the company has made any changes in these areas.
Meta brings its chatbot to India’s massive user base of 500 million WhatsApp users and hundreds of millions of other app users. On WhatsApp, not only can Meta AI be used for individual chats, but chatbots can also be used in group chats, such as planning a trip or deciding on a movie to watch.
The company said Meta AI doesn’t have access to the context of group conversations beyond the text you use when you mention or reply to the chatbot. The company fine-tunes its models based on your conversations with the chatbot. Meta said it’s not possible to turn off or hide the Meta AI features in its app. But people can choose to search without invoking the chatbot.