Meta Ready To Launch Artificial Intelligence Chatbot With Various AI Personalities

JAKARTA - Meta Platforms to launch a series of artificial intelligence chatbots (AI) featuring various personalities in September, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, August 1.

Meta has designed a prototype chatbot that can have human-like conversations with users, in a company's bid to increase engagement with its social media platform, according to the report citing sources familiar with the plan.

Social media companies based in Menlo Park, California, are even exploring chatbots that speak like Abraham Lincoln and others providing advice on travel options in a surfer style, the report added. The purpose of this chatbot will be a new search function and provide recommendations.

The report comes as Meta executives focus on increasing user retention on their new text-based app, Threads, after the app lost more than half of its users in the weeks it launched on July 5. METa itself did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Facebook's parent reported a strong increase in ad revenue in its financial statements last week, with an estimated third-quarter revenue above market expectations.

The company has bounced back from a tiring 2022, driven by hysteria surrounding emerging AI technology and savings efforts in which the company has reduced about 21,000 employees since fall last year.

Bloomberg News also reported in July that Apple was working on an AI offering similar to Google's ChatGPT and Bard, adding that Apple had built its own framework, known as 'Ajax', to create a large language model and also test chatbots that some engineers called 'Apple GPT'.