Meta AI is free, but it cannot be trusted: Report

Meta has recently released a large language model, Llama 3, that powers "Meta AI," which is a chatbot that has been implemented into several of the company's social media apps. But some in the tech world have noted that it is free to use, which, unfortunately, reflects the quality of the artificially intelligent bot.

Tech Crunch reported that the chatbot "tends to regurgitate a lot of web search results, and it doesn't excel at anything, but hey — the price is right."

Meta AI can currently be accessed online for free by navigating to Meta.ai, on Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. Not only has this AI been made available, it has replaced the traditional search box featured on all of these platforms.

Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly said that he is expecting Meta AI to be "the most used and best AI assistant in the world."

Meta AI is the company's response to OpenAI's ChatGPT, which flipped the world on its head in 2022. Similar bots have also been developed, such as Microsoft's Bing AI and Google's Gemini.

The New York Times reported that Meta bot's image generator was built to compete against Adobe's Firefly, Midjourney, and DALL-E. Unlike some of these other apps, Meta has made their AI available for free within their social media platforms.

The Times reported that this represented the "most aggressive push yet from a big tech company to bring this flavor of artificial intelligence — known as generative A.I. — to the mainstream."

Zuckerberg took to Instagram on Thursday, writing: "We believe Meta AI is now the most intelligent AI assistant that you can freely use."

Brian Chen — the author of the Times piece — suggested that it would be best for users of Meta AI to approach it "with caution," noting that it "makes lots of mistakes when you treat it as a search engine."

Some have suggested that it is best to just use the bot for fun, including "express[ing] yourself when chatting with friends."

One Meta spokeswoman said that since the technology is new, it may not garner the most accurate responses. Despite this flaw, there is currently no way to shut off Meta AI while inside of Meta's social media apps.

Tech Crunch concluded: "Meta has positioned its AI as a first layer for casual questions, and it does work. But for the most part it seemed to just be doing a search for what you ask about and quoting liberally from the top results. And half the time it included the search at the end anyway. So why not just use Google or Bing in the first place?"

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