What is Meta’s New AI - How Can You Use It?
Meta has joined the chat…bot.
In a press release this week Mark Zuckerberg unveiled plans for Meta’s new AI tool. Integrated within its Facebook, Instagram and whatsapp platforms and the use of an AI chatbot with new Ray-Ban smart glasses.
Despite Meta AI (the company) being around since 2015, this is one of the largest announcements they have made and are finally joining the AI chat bot fight.
The adoption of AI in marketing campaigns has also been on the rise. Reports suggest that 45% of brands are already using AI in their marketing strategies, while 33% have expressed intent to do so in the future. This trend is expected to continue as more businesses recognise the benefits of AI in digital marketing.
The Rise of AI in Digital Marketing:
In 2023, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been making significant strides, especially for those in the digital marketing industry. It has been instrumental in transforming the way businesses interact with their customers, making marketing efforts more efficient and effective.
One of the key areas where AI has been making a difference is in social media content creation. AI has the ability to analyse trends and produce content that specifically targets audiences on these platforms in real-time. This has allowed businesses to engage with their customers in a more personalised and timely manner. AI generation has also increased the speed at which businesses and influencers can pump out content by assisting in proofreading, idea generation and fact checking.
AI has been a game-changer for paid search. It has automated manual tasks, improved targeting capabilities, and optimised bidding strategies for better performance. This has resulted in more effective ad campaigns and a higher return on investment for businesses who choose to run paid search ads themselves.
For marketing agencies that offer PPC and Paid social services, AI has not been quite as revolutionary as platforms would have you believe. Sometimes an expert really does know more than the AI.
Lastly, Generative AI, which produces text, visual, and video content from prompts, is currently at the forefront of AI applications in digital marketing. This technology has the potential to revolutionise content creation, making it more efficient and tailored to the needs of the audience.
Functionality of Meta’s AI chatbot:
Technical aspects of the facebook AI chatbot include its reliance on Meta’s large language model Llama 2 and image generator Emu. It will use voices of some much loved celebrities to offer tailored answers and advice. In a similar but more complex version of how Bing AI offers 3 moods for its generative answers (creative, neutral and precise).
Availability and Accessibility
For now, Meta is only releasing its new tools to a handful of US users in English language, in a beta testing. With no global release date in sight. Although, it was announced that businesses and users will both have access to the new Facebook AI chatbot. Whatever that means.
Platforms
Meta AI is a new assistant that users can interact with like a person across all its major platforms. It will be available on WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram, and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses and Quest 3. The assistant is powered by a custom model that leverages technology from Llama 2 and Meta's latest large language model (LLM) research.
Chatbot Integration
On Instagram, in Messenger and across Whatsapp, users will be able to access the AI powered assistant simply by typing “@MetaAI /imagine” followed by their specific query or prompt in their chats.
The Meta AI assistant can be added to group chats too, helping out with tasks such as making travel plans, by asking for price information or updated travel guidance in specific regions.
Now available for pre-order, the Ray Ban smart glasses with inbuilt Facebook AI Chatbot, allow users to access voice search by saying “Hey Meta”, which opens up the conversational assistant. The new glasses will also see improvements made to the camera and audio capabilities. Despite all this tech, they haven’t forgotten about aesthetics. With 250 new frame and lens combinations, the new generation of glasses are lighter and more comfortable for the wearer too.
Meta AI Tools: The Specifics
AI Stickers
Meta is introducing AI stickers across its apps, which can be customised for chats and stories. The technology behind this feature can turn text prompts into unique, high-quality stickers.
Image Editing
New AI editing tools, restyle and backdrop, are being introduced on Instagram. These tools allow users to transform their images or co-create AI-generated images with friends. Users can type a descriptor like "watercolour" or a more detailed prompt to describe the new look and feel of the image they want to create.
AI Characters and Social Profiles:
Meta is launching 28 more AIs in beta for its Facebook AI chatbot, each with unique interests and personalities. Some are played by cultural icons and influencers, including Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady, Kendall Jenner, Naomi Osaka and Mr Beast.
Users can follow each of the AIs on their Facebook and Instagram profiles. The AIs’ social profiles are curated by Meta and include some posts with images generated by technology from the Emu model.
How can Meta AI Tools be Used for Digital Marketing?
Not only is Meta planning on releasing tools for businesses and users to create their own AI models, in a very similar move to Google’s bard, but the tools already released (only for a handful of US users though) are enough to disrupt digital marketing once again.
Meta is one of the biggest social medias out there, boasting at least 2 billion users on each platform (Facebook, Instagram and Whatsapp). For many marketers these platforms are the bread and butter of what they do. Posting across socials and contacting clients or customers via whatsapp, any big changes to Meta are bound to shake up the industry as a whole.
With image editors, users can improve or tweak their own photos to reflect a different style or to remove unwanted backgrounds. This means that anyone can change their photos, not just skilled designers using complex software.
Content creation is one of a marketers’ most time consuming activities, with text-to-image prompts, anyone can make anything in seconds. Which of course comes with its own set of issues.
How do we know what is and isn’t AI generated?
Tiktok is releasing new stickers on AI generated content to better inform the users on its platform. Twitter (X) has been adding warnings and tags to its content for years. Meta will undoubtedly have a safeguard in place to allow users to see which is organic, user made content and what’s been created by their AI or another other provider.
Summary
Over time, Meta plans to make AIs for businesses and creators available, and release their AI studio for people and developers to build their own AIs.
These new AI experiences come with a new set of challenges for the industry. Meta is rolling out its new AIs slowly and has built-in safeguards. Meaning users and marketers can rest easy, knowing things won’t change overnight.
We all expected Google Bard to revolutionise searching this year but I’ve yet to notice any huge changes to the way I use the platform.
This move into AI is seen as an attempt by Meta to compete with Google and OpenAI, who have been pushing out advanced chatbots and other stand-alone AI-products. Meta's strategy involves creating different AI products for different uses, the Facebook AI chatbot, text to image generators and more. As opposed to a single flagship chatbot. Only time (and the Facebook comments section) will tell if it’s the right move or not.
