Meta Platforms is preparing to launch a range of artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbots that exhibit different personalities as soon as September, according to reports released on Tuesday.
In an effort to increase user engagement on its social media platforms, Meta has been developing prototypes of chatbots that can converse with users in a human-like manner, the report, which cited people with knowledge of the plans, claims.
The social media behemoth, based in Menlo Park, California, is even looking into chatbots that mimic Abraham Lincoln’s speech patterns and another that offers travel suggestions in the manner of a surfer, according to the report. These chatbots’ main functions will be to offer suggestions and a new search function.
The report is released at the same time that Meta executives are working to increase retention for their new text-based app, Threads, after the app lost more than half of its users in the weeks following its launch on July 5.
In its earnings last week, the Facebook parent company reported a significant increase in advertising revenue and forecasted third-quarter revenue above market expectations.
The company has been recovering from a difficult 2022, helped by the hype surrounding cutting-edge AI technology and a drive for austerity that has seen it lay off about 21,000 employees since last fall.
Also, Llama 2, an updated version of Meta’s open-source artificial intelligence model that runs on Windows and will be made available by Microsoft through its Azure cloud service, was released in July for commercial use.
More reports show that Apple is working on AI offerings similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard, adding that it has built its own framework, known as ‘Ajax’, to create large language models and is also testing a chatbot that some engineers call ‘Apple GPT’.