Recently, it was reported that Meta is preparing to launch a generative AI chatbot, internally called "Gen AI Personas", and the main user group is young users.
Generative AI has reportedly been tested internally and is expected to be announced at the Meta Connect conference on Wednesday, September 27. The bots are said to have "unique personalities" that facilitate interaction with users, although some of them apparently offer productivity skills support, such as assisting with coding or other tasks. A similar but more universally targeted Meta chatbot character has been tested on Instagram.
In addition, during Meta Connect, the company will also showcase more information from the metaverse project and the new Quest 3 headset.
It is reported that Meta is planning dozens of artificial intelligence "personality chatbots", including a robot named "Bob", which has "superior intelligence, sharp intelligence and sarcastic and spicy tone", similar to the character Bender in the cartoon series "Fly Out of the Future". Meta is also said to be working on a product that allows celebrities and creators to make their own AI chatbots to interact with fans and followers.
In fact, Meta is not the first major social media company to launch an AI chatbot. Snap Inc。 A similar service was launched in February. Snap's version allows users to talk to the AI to get suggestions on birthday gift ideas, event plans, dinner recipes, and other topics that might interest them. Since the launch of Snap's artificial intelligence, it has been used by about 150 million people.
The comparison with Snap is obvious, and the introduction of AI chatbots is clearly part of Meta's broader plan to make its services, such as Facebook and Instagram, more appealing to young people. But one thing that the Wall Street Journal and other media reports overlooked was who Meta's real rival was, and that was Character.ai (merged into Character Technologies Inc.) ）。
If you've never heard of Character.ai before, you've probably revealed your age, because while the media has been obsessed with OpenAI LP's ChatGPT, Google LLC's Bard, and other more well-known AI services, Character.ai has become the most popular AI service for 18- to 24-year-olds.
According to SilimarWeb, as of August, Character.ai had nearly 60% share of the AI market in the 18-24 age group, and perhaps even more shockingly, Character.ai beat ChatGPT and Bard in monthly visits to desktop and mobile networks worldwide. ChatGPT is far ahead in app usage, but most people reading this have never heard of a company that beats industry darlings on key metrics without getting the same level of attention.
Designed by former Googlers and launched in September 2022, Character.ai provides user-friendly text responses and contextual conversational engagement. Chatacter.ai is different in that it offers characters based on fictional media sources or celebrities, as well as original characters, for users to interact with and play with – which sounds a lot like Meta's plan.
In addition, Meta's AI work includes developing a more powerful large-language model to rival OpenAI's latest GPT-4, which is the foundation for ChatGPT and Bing, as well as AI models that help Horizon Worlds avatars support.