People all over the internet noticed a new feature on Instagram on Friday: Meta AI, the company’s all-purpose, AI-powered chatbot that can create photos, compose poetry, and respond to queries with just a text command. The decision is hardly shocking. It seems obvious to integrate Meta AI to Instagram given that it was first unveiled by Meta in September 2023 and that it has been integrating the chatbot into many products for the past few months, including Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp.
A Meta representative said, “Our generative AI-powered experiences are under development in various phases, and we’re testing a range of them publicly in a limited capacity,” implying that not everyone has access to the feature yet. The story was first reported by TechCrunch, which stated that Instagram’s search bar was displaying Meta AI.
Tapping it let me start a conversation with Meta AI just I would DM a friend on Instagram. I was able to ask the chatbot to give me definitions of words, suggest headlines for some stories I’m working on, and generate images of dogs on skateboards. I was also able to ask Meta AI to recommend Reels with cats in them, which it was able to do easily.
But when my colleague Aaron Souppouris asked Meta AI in WhatsApp to recommend Reels, it showed him some Reels in that app too — suggesting that the bot in Instagram isn’t really doing anything specific to Instagram. Instead, Meta is simply shoehorning the same chatbot into every app it owns.
If you tap a hamburger menu within the bot, Meta AI will also show you a long list of possible actions you ask the bot to take.
Why would you want a chatbot in Instagram to suggest tips for dealing with credit card debit, have a debate about cardio versus weights, or suggest hacks to travel with points, I do not know. But the point is that if you want to, you can.
