Have you ever wanted to chat directly with Tom Brady about sports? Meta wants to give you that dream experience.
Today, the company hosted Meta Connect 2023, its annual developer conference. In addition to revealing more details about the Meta Quest 3 mixed-reality headset, which will now officially start shipping on October 10th, the company also showed off some of its work in the world of artificial intelligence, especially some new generative AI experiences.
One new experience is AI stickers, which allow you to create stickers from a text prompt that you have on your phone. The stickers will be able to be used in WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. The company is also rolling out the ability to edit photos with AI, enabling users to say “surround me with puppies” from a photo in their camera roll.
Using technology from Llama 2 and our foundational model for image generation called Emu, our AI tool turns your text prompts into multiple unique, high-quality stickers in seconds. This new feature, which is rolling out to select English-language users over the next month in WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and Facebook Stories, provides infinitely more options to convey how you’re feeling at any moment. AI stickers will roll out to select English language users over the next month.
Perhaps the most interesting announcement for generative AI from the company was in the area of chatbots. In addition to Meta AI, the company is also releasing 28 more AI chatbots that you can interact with on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. Even more interesting, these AIs are based on celebrities like Mr. Beast, Snoop Dogg, and Tom Brady. You can check out the full list of characters you can interact with below:
- Charli D’Amelio as Coco, Dance enthusiast
- Chris Paul as Perry, Pro golfer helping you perfect your stroke
- Dwyane Wade as Victor, Ironman triathlete motivating you to be your best self
- Izzy Adesanya as Luiz, Showy MMA prospect who can back up his trash talk
- Kendall Jenner as Billie, No-BS, ride-or-die companion
- LaurDIY as Dylan, Quirky DIY and Craft expert and companion for Gen Z
- MrBeast as Zach, The big brother who will roast you — because he cares
- Naomi Osaka as Tamika, Anime-obsessed Sailor Senshi in training
- Paris Hilton as Amber, Detective partner for solving whodunnits
- Raven Ross as Angie, Workout class queen who balances fitness with meditation
- Roy Choi as Max, Seasoned sous chef for culinary tips and tricks
- Sam Kerr as Sally, Free-spirited friend who’ll tell you when to take a deep breath
- Snoop Dogg as Dungeon Master, Choose your own adventure with the Dungeon Master
- Tom Brady as Bru, Wisecracking sports debater who pulls no punches
The company says that it is “rolling these out in beta in the United States today” and that it will “add new characters in the coming weeks played by Bear Grylls, Chloe Kim, and Josh Richards among others.”
Meta also announced Meta AI, its new assistant that will span across the company’s apps and devices — basically, its own Siri, Google Assistant, or Alexa. The company says that Meta AI will be available on WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, and the Meta Quest 3.
Imagine you and your friends are in a group chat discussing which trailhead to try in Santa Cruz. Meta AI surfaces options directly in the chat, so you can decide as a group which location to explore. What if after the hike you want a creative way to commemorate the day? Meta AI can help. Type “@MetaAI /imagine” followed by a descriptive text prompt like “create a button badge with a hiker and redwood trees,” and it will create a digital merit badge in the chat with your friends.
We’ll see how these experiences work as we get our hands on them, but one thing is clear: Mark Zuckerberg, like almost every other technology CEO right now, is pivoting the company pretty hard into artificial intelligence.
