WhatsApp is all set to get a major artificial intelligence (AI) upgrade as the Meta AI integrated into the app is getting several new features. The Meta-owned instant messaging platform on Tuesday announced that it will be rolling out new image generation features and multilingual support for the app’s AI assistant. The features will be available on both Android and iOS, but not all of them will be released globally. The Imagine Me feature lets users click a photo of themselves to generate various AI-generated avatars.
In a blog post, WhatsApp highlighted the new AI features it is getting. The first is multi-language support. Meta AI is expanding to a total of 22 countries. The new countries where the AI chatbot will be available are Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru and Cameroon.
In addition, the chatbot is also getting support for several new languages. Previously, it could only accept prompts and generate responses in English, but now it can support French, German, Hindi (both Devanagari and Romanized script), Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. The social media giant has confirmed that it will add support for more languages in the coming months.
As for the image generation features, Meta AI on WhatsApp is getting the Imagine Me feature, which allows users to generate images of themselves in AI-generated settings and styles. For example, users can generate an image of themselves relaxing on the beach or as an astronaut. This feature requires the user to click a photo first, presumably to prevent deepfake abuse. Notably, this feature is rolling out in beta and will only be available in the US. More countries may get the feature in the near future.
Another interesting feature that WhatsApp is getting is Imagine Edit. This will allow users to take an AI-generated image and edit it with text prompts. Users can add, remove, or change objects, backgrounds, and more. For example, after generating an image of a woman walking in a park, the user can ask Meta AI to change the setting to a market or change the woman’s outfit while keeping everything else the same. According to the post, this feature will be rolling out globally.
Finally, WhatsApp is also getting an app-exclusive feature. Users will get the option to try out the recently released Meta Llama 3.1 405B AI model. The company claims that the AI model can handle complex queries better, solve advanced mathematical problems, and write code more efficiently. This feature is also expected to roll out globally, but the company has not confirmed this yet.
