The surge in AI chatbot technology extends beyond simple platform integration, fostering a growing market for independent AI chat applications.
Data from SensorTower indicates that total downloads for AI chatbot applications and AI art generators reached 1.5 billion in 2024, with in-app purchase revenue nearing $1.5 billion. A 2025 report highlighted that AI chatbot applications experienced the most significant growth within these two subcategories.
While OpenAI’s ChatGPT application has emerged as a leader, capturing nearly 23% of all AI app downloads last year, major tech companies like Google with its Gemini app, Microsoft with Copilot, and now Meta with Meta AI are entering the arena.
Meta recently launched a standalone AI application powered by its Llama 4 model. The company stated in a blog post that the multi-modal, multi-lingual AI assistant is designed to provide users with responses that “feel more personalized, relevant, and conversational in tone.”
The social media giant’s AI assistant is already accessible through platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. However, a dedicated, AI-centric application signals a more focused consumer product offering.
Meta faces stiff competition in the AI chatbot app market, including ChatGPT, which boasts over 500 million weekly active users. However, Meta possesses a key advantage: access to vast amounts of user data shared on Facebook and Instagram, potentially allowing its AI chatbot app to gain profound insights into users, their preferences, and more. This data-driven advantage also raises familiar concerns about privacy in the age of AI.
What are the critical features of the Meta AI app? What does it offer? How does it differentiate itself from the wave of other AI assistants flooding the market? And can it truly reshape the future of social media and online interaction, as Mark Zuckerberg boldly claims?
Core Technology Behind the Meta AI App
The underlying technology of the Meta AI app is Llama 4. This is the company’s most advanced open AI model, launched in April of this year. According to Meta, Llama 4 was trained on a “vast amount of unlabelled text, image, and video data,” giving it “broad visual understanding.”
It’s the first of the Llama family of AI models to be trained using a Mixture of Experts (MoE) architecture, which is said to be more computationally efficient when training and answering queries.
Beyond just chat, the Meta AI app also features image generation and editing capabilities. Prompts can be fed to the AI chatbot through voice or text. Through the app, users can also ask the chatbot to search the web for information on various topics.
“It can help you get recommendations, dive deep into a topic, and connect with your friends and family,” Meta said. “Or, if you just want to play around, we’ll offer conversation starters to spark your search.”
Exploring the Social Dimension of the Meta AI App
Notably, the Meta AI app also has a “Discover” Feed that showcases how other people are using the AI chatbot. “You can see the best prompts people are sharing, or remix them to make your own,” Meta said. “And, as always, you’re in control: Nothing is shared to your feed unless you choose to post it.”
Adding a “Discover” Feed into the AI chatbot app gives it a social media flavor. “It’s more social, so it can show you content from the people and places you care about,” Meta stated.
Personalization and Privacy Concerns
The Meta AI assistant in the new application is purported to be even more personalized for users who link their Facebook and Instagram profiles to their Accounts Center.
“You can tell Meta AI to remember certain things about you (like that you love to travel and are learning to speak a new language), and it can also pick up on important details based on context,” the company said.
The company added, “Your Meta AI assistant can also provide more relevant answers by drawing on information you’ve already chosen to share on Meta products, like your profile and the things you like or engage with.” These personalized responses from Meta AI are currently only available to users in the United States and Canada.
As Meta hopes to define its competitive advantage by providing personalized and contextualized AI-generated responses, leveraging user data from its products in this way raises potential antitrust concerns. For example, Meta has previously faced scrutiny for sharing WhatsApp user data with the Competition Commission of India.
Ease of Voice Interaction
Beyond text conversations, Meta’s AI assistant can be prompted via voice input. “Voice is the most natural way to interact with Meta AI, and the Meta AI app is designed to help you seamlessly start conversations with the touch of a button – even if you’re multitasking or on the go,” the company said.
When the microphone is in use, a visible icon is displayed on the application screen. Those who prefer to have voice mode enabled by default need to toggle the “Ready to Talk” feature in the application settings.
“We’ve also included a voice demo built using full-duplex voice technology that you can turn on and off to test it out,” Meta stated. However, the voice-enabled version of the AI assistant cannot currently access the web or real-time information. It is available to users in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Seamless Integration with Smart Glasses
Users will be able to switch from their smart glasses to the application when interacting with Meta AI. “You’ll be able to start a conversation on your glasses, then access it from the app or web from your history tab to pick up where you left off,” Meta said.
However, it will not be possible to transfer AI interactions from the app to glasses.
Meta has also stated that its View companion app, developed for Ray-Ban smart glasses owners, will no longer be available. Instead, those features will be integrated into the new AI application. “Existing Meta View users can continue managing their AI glasses from the Meta AI app – all your paired devices, settings and media will automatically transfer to the new devices tab once you update the app,” the company said.
Exploring Additional Features of the Meta AI App
Meta stated that it is also testing an AI-powered document editor that can be used to generate documents with text and images. These documents can also be exported as PDF files. It is also developing a new feature to let Meta AI analyze and understand documents.
Zuckerberg’s Vision for Future Social Interaction
Speaking about his vision for AI chatbots as friends, Zuckerberg said during a recent podcast appearance, “I think the average American has fewer than three friends. And there’s more of a need that people have for more meaningful things.”
According to Meta’s CEO, the future of social media will be far more interactive than it is today.
He told podcast host Dwarkesh Patel: “You’re going to be scrolling through your feed, and there’ll be some piece of content that might look like a Reel, but you can talk to it or interact with it and it’ll respond to you, or it’ll change what it’s doing. Or you can like jump in and interact with it like a game. All of this is going to be AI.”
Addressing Challenges and Concerns
However, several challenges need to be addressed along the way.
The Wall Street Journal reported last month that AI celebrity chatbots launched by Meta on Facebook and Instagram were willing to engage in sexually suggestive conversations with users who registered as being under 18. TechCrunch reported that OpenAI’s ChatGPT was also happy to generate sexual stories for users registered as minors. According to the report, the chatbot even asked them about some of their kinks and favorite role-playing scenarios.