Generative AI has been a hot topic in the tech sector since the beginning of this year, and as more businesses enter the AI market, the rivalry heats up. As it was something that people had never encountered before in January 2023, OpenAI’s ChatGPT appeared to be in the lead in the AI race. A little over a month later, Microsoft introduced Bing AI and Google revealed Bard, its own AI chatbot. Thus began a massive AI race, and ever since, the three businesses have been updating their own chatbots to stay competitive. Another digital behemoth is apparently preparing to join the race for AI chatbots.
According to a story by The Financial Times, Meta is developing AI chatbots that can not only mimic human speech but also famous people like Abraham Lincoln. The FT article claims that Meta could launch these AI-powered chatbots as early as next month. These chatbots will probably each have their own personality and react in a way that resembles a human. Abraham Lincoln, a former US president, is one of the personas that the chatbots will imitate. Users can converse with chatbots, get advice on numerous subjects, and more.
According to the source, the chatbots will serve as a “fun product” that people can explore as well as provide a new option for users to search for items on Meta. In the face of fierce competition from other social media sites like TiktoK, Meta is attempting to keep users with the help of these future AI chatbots. In addition, the chatbots will give Meta the opportunity to gather more information about the users’ interests, which will allow them to show them adverts that are more relevant to their interests. Since advertising accounts for the majority of Meta’s revenue, this might also increase the company’s advertising revenue.
“Once users interact with a chatbot, it really exposes much more of their data to the company, so the company can do anything they want with that data,” Ravit Dotan, an AI ethics expert and researcher, told the Financial Times.
Recently, it was revealed that Meta has lost more than half of its Threads users. The text-based platform was revealed around a month ago and, in just five days after introduction, had more than 100 million downloads, making it one of the social media networks with the fastest growth. However, as more individuals stop using the app, the user base has now decreased. Since Threads’ launch, more than half of users have quit using it, according to Reuters research. The same revelation was made by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg during a town hall meeting for employees, who also admitted that while retention on the Threads app was “better than the executives had expected, it was not perfect.” It was stated that its source was the internal phone recording that Reuters had access to.
“Obviously, it would be fantastic if all of them, or even half of them, stuck around if you had more than 100 million people join up. We’re still not there, according to Zuckerberg.