WhatsApp trials Meta AI chatbot in India, more markets

WhatsApp is testing Meta AI, its large language model-powered chatbot, with users in India and some other markets, signalling its intentions to tap the massive user base to scale its AI offerings.

The company recently began testing the AI chatbot, until now available in limited markets including the U.S., with some users in India, many of them said. India, home to more than 500 million WhatsApp users, is the instant messaging service’s largest market.

Meta confirmed the move in a statement. “Our generative AI-powered experiences are under development in varying phases, and we’re testing a range of them publicly in a limited capacity,” a Meta spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Meta unveiled Meta AI, its general-purpose assistant, in late September. The AI chatbot is designed to answer user queries directly within chats as well as offer them the ability to generate photorealistic images from text prompts.

WhatsApp’s massive global user base, boasting over 2 billion monthly active users, presents Meta with a very unique opportunity to scale its AI offerings. By integrating Meta AI into WhatsApp, the Facebook-parent firm can expose its advanced language model and image generation capabilities to an enormous audience, potentially dwarfing the reach of its competitors.

The company separately confirmed earlier this week that it will be launching Llama 3, the next version of its open source large language model, within the next month.