Five quick questions: What is Meta AI and can you turn it off? - ABC ...
The launch of Meta's artificial intelligence tool has generated a wave of confusion among users as the AI bots descended upon the apps and began interacting with real people. Meta, the company that owns Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp, launched its new virtual assistant in Australia and several other countries on Friday, following an initial launch in the United States in 2023.
While the tool is built with Meta's improved Llama 3 open-source language model, it ran into some hiccups, which both amused and frustrated users have shared online. Bots were seen posing as humans with made-up life experiences, including one chatbot that joined a mum's group on Facebook to talk about its "child", exposing some of the pitfalls and limitations of the technology.
What is Meta AI?
Meta AI is an artificial intelligence tool, used to answer questions in a similar fashion to competitors ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot. It is a form of generative AI that is trained on data available online and can process language to provide intelligent responses in a chat, including follow-up responses that mimic human conversation.
How does Meta AI work?
Meta AI appears on social media feeds and search bars on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, where it prompts the user with topics and launches a chat when a query is sent. It has also been spotted participating in conversations in Facebook groups. Since ChatGPT took the internet by storm in 2022, competition in the AI space has been amping up with all the major tech giants launching their own version.
Can you turn off Meta AI?
Unfortunately, despite some users searching high and low for a way to do so, you can't turn off Meta AI. However, if you ask Meta AI for a way to turn the assistant off, it might give you a made-up answer.
You can still use the search bars normally by typing in words and clicking on the text results that appear below, rather than pressing the blue send icon to the right end of the bar, which will launch an AI chat.
What are the uses of Meta AI?
Like its competitors, Meta AI can generate text and images based on user prompts for a variety of different uses. Some of the uses the Meta website recommends its AI for include home decor inspiration, study help, and restaurant recommendations.
What are the concerns with Meta AI?
Meta AI has caused confusion by responding to conversations in Facebook groups seemingly unprompted, including by trying to give away nonexistent items in a Buy Nothing forum. Love it or hate it, OpenAI's ChatGPT has been around for a year, and artificial intelligence is becoming more integrated into everyday life.
Teething problems are expected, especially with Meta's AI reaching such a large audience instantly. "With a little bit of playing around, many people will become familiar and more comfortable with it, and it will become the go-to source of information as well," said Professor Karanasios.
Over time, Meta AI will become a highly personalized tool that is familiar with a person's needs and tailor its content accordingly.
