Meta AI tested: Doesn't quite justify its own existence, but free is free ...
Introduction
Meta’s new large language model, Llama 3, powers the imaginatively named 'Meta AI,' a newish chatbot that the social media and advertising company has installed in as many of its apps and interfaces as possible. How does this model stack up against other all-purpose conversational AIs? It tends to regurgitate a lot of web search results, and it doesn’t excel at anything, but hey — the price is right. 
Availability and Usage
You can currently access Meta AI for free on the web at Meta.ai, on Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and probably a few other places if those aren’t enough. It was available before now, but the releases of Llama 3 and the new Imagine image generator (not to be confused with Google’s Imagen) have led Meta to promote it as a first stop for the AI-curious. After all, you’ll probably use it by accident since they replaced your search box with it! 
Evaluation Process
A quick reminder about our ‘review’ process: This is a very informal evaluation of the model, not with synthetic benchmarks but just asking ordinary questions that normal people might. We compare the results to our experience with other models, or just to what you would hope to get from one. It’s the furthest thing from comprehensive, but it’s something anyone can understand and replicate. 
Comparison with Other Models
Meta AI produced highly straightforward, almost minimal answers. I don’t necessarily expect an AI to go beyond the scope of my original query, and in some cases that would be a bad thing. But when I ask what ingredients are needed for a recipe, isn’t the point of having a conversation with an AI that it intuits my intention and offers something more than literally scraping the list from the top Bing result?
Conclusion
I’m not a big user of these platforms to begin with, but Meta AI didn’t convince me it’s useful for anything in particular. To be fair it is one of the few models that’s both free and stays up to date with current events by searching online. In comparing it now and then to the free Copilot model on Bing, the latter usually worked better, but I hit my daily ‘conversation limit’ after just a few exchanges. (It’s not clear what if any usage limits Meta will place on Meta AI.) 
If you can’t be bothered to open a browser to search for ‘lunar new year’ or ‘quinoa water ratio,’ you can probably ask Meta AI if you’re already in one of the company’s apps (and often, you are). You can’t ask Tiktok that!
