I tried the new Meta AI app: 3 unexpected features

Meta has spent the higher a part of a yr integrating Meta AI with Fb, Instagram, WhatsApp, and its different present companies, however hadn’t but launched a standalone expertise for Meta AI followers. That every one modified yesterday at LlamaCon, the corporate’s inaugural AI developer convention, when the corporate finally launched the Meta AI app.

The brand new app is constructed with Meta’s Llama 4 model. It is a full-fledged competitor to ChatGPT, which turned the fastest-growing app in history after its launch.

Already, AI lovers are digging into the app to see what units it other than the competitors. Per Meta’s press launch, the large takeaway is personalization. Not solely does the app combine together with your Fb and Instagram accounts to provide you extra personalised responses, nevertheless it additionally has a reminiscence characteristic, so it might probably reference previous discussions and add extra context to future ones.

This isn’t essentially distinctive to the Meta AI app since Grok additionally does this with folks’s X accounts, and each different main AI chatbot has the memory feature. Nonetheless, we might argue the power to work with each Fb and Instagram is pretty vital, contemplating their widespread recognition. That additionally offers Meta AI extra potential knowledge to attract from to make its solutions extra personalised.

With that mentioned, there’s extra to the Meta AI app than simply its personalization and reminiscence capabilities, and a few of these options are pretty distinctive to the Meta AI expertise. So, after downloading and experimenting with the brand new Meta AI app, listed below are three large options to take a look at.

A social Uncover feed to provide you concepts

Credit score: Screenshot courtesy of Meta

Let’s begin with the obvious one, and that’s the Uncover feed. Upon opening the app, you’ll have the ability to have interaction with it by tapping on the compass icon. It really works nearly precisely as you’ll anticipate. Individuals use Meta AI to generate solutions to questions, photographs, and different such issues, after which these posts are shared to the feed so that you can have interaction with. 

You may like, remark, or share something you see there. A fourth button seems to load the identical immediate into your individual Meta AI dialog, so you’ll be able to see what you get while you ask Meta AI the identical query. Throughout my testing, I noticed somebody publish a picture with the immediate “think about me Miley Cyrus at Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter Tour.” The picture it generated for me was completely different from the one in my Uncover feed. Now, whether or not Meta’s AI is supposed to be producing quasi-photorealistic photographs of public figures is one other query totally.

Close to as I can inform, the Uncover feed has two essential makes use of. The primary is exhibiting off what Meta AI can do whereas providing you with yet another thing to doomscroll. The opposite is giving customers recent concepts on what they’ll ask Meta AI about. Throughout my temporary time on Uncover, I discovered folks asking about Mars colonization, what colours would work for his or her wardrobe, and a great deal of stuff in regards to the Catholic Church within the wake of Pope Francis’ passing. In brief, it not solely serves leisure worth, but additionally as an thought generator, particularly when the next wave of AI trends hits the market.

{Hardware} assist

The Meta AI app additionally helps the Ray-Ban Meta Smart Glasses. Actually, Meta is replacing the existing Meta View companion app with the Meta AI app, so that is the app you’ll want to make use of shifting ahead in your sensible glasses. It’s straightforward sufficient to get to. Simply open up the app and click on the glasses icon so as to add your sensible glasses, after which proceed utilizing them as regular from there. 

Per Meta, when you get every little thing synced up, you’ll have the ability to begin a dialog on the glasses and proceed it on the app. Chat historical past will even be accessible by means of the Meta AI app, and it’ll all be built-in with conversations you will have on the app natively. Meta does word that you just gained’t have the ability to begin a chat from the app after which proceed on the glasses. Even so, OpenAI, xAI, and Google actually do not have such a {hardware} integration.

I don’t personally personal a pair of the sensible glasses, so there are possible some further little issues that I haven’t seen that Meta didn’t put within the press launch. Even so, direct {hardware} assist is one thing ChatGPT doesn’t boast.

Credit score: Screenshot courtesy of Meta

Full-duplex Voice Mode

This one isn’t notably new or distinctive, nevertheless it’s the primary such implementation for Meta’s AI. For the uninitiated, full-duplex voice mode describes the characteristic when you’ll be able to chat with AI in real-time. You speak, it responds, you reply again, so on and so forth. Just a few AI chatbots have this characteristic already. 

Meta makes use of it in a different way, although. Whilst you can nonetheless chat with Meta’s AI in each instructions, full-duplex voice mode additionally adjustments how the AI talks again. It integrates pure human language, like pauses, together with filler phrases like “umm.” That is demonstrably completely different from how the AI sometimes talks to you, so it’s one thing completely different for individuals who need that. 

The app says that the characteristic is in beta and doesn’t use probably the most up to date data base just like the common AI voice, so that you’ll possible worsen solutions for those who use it. As soon as it hits primetime, it’s a neat little addition. Within the meantime, the common AI voice has choices for John Cena, Awkwafina, Judi Dench, Keegan-Michael Key, and Kristen Bell.

Credit score: Screenshot courtesy of Meta