Meta's AI Chatbot Is Here And It's Called Metamate

Meta's Metamate AI chatbot has been apparently trained on the company's internal data.

In a bid to take on AI chatbot rivals, Facebook parent Meta has unveiled its own artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot named Metamate, media reports say. The social networking giant recently gave a sneak peek into its "incredible breakthroughs" in AI and gave a hint at unveiling a productivity assistant for its staff. Metamate is currently being introduced internally to a small group.

Meta's Metamate AI chatbot has been apparently trained on the company's internal data and the chatbot will be available for use within the company only. The new AI chatbot utilises company data to help its staffers summarise meetings, write code and debug features, says a report by The Verge.

The company's employees will be able to create their own prompts and share them with colleagues via the AI chatbot. 

When considering how to power the chatbot, Meta had discussions with Microsoft and viral chatbot ChatGPT's parent OpenAI, but it decided to employ a separate, in-house model.

Earlier in February this year, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg had announced that the company was creating a new "top-level" product team which would be "focused" on generative AI. The company CEO explained that in the short term, the company would focus on building creative and expressive tools.

And, over the longer term, the company would develop "AI personas" which will help users in a variety of ways. Last week, it was reported that Meta-owned Instagram was working on a feature that would let users chat with AI within the app.

Meanwhile, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, expressed optimism about global coordination on artificial intelligence (AI) following a tour of various capital cities. This tour aimed to capitalise on the growing interest in generative AI and shape the regulations surrounding this emerging technology. Altman, a prominent figure representing the startup backed by Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O), embarked on a whirlwind tour to engage with stakeholders and exert influence on AI regulation.

Regulators globally are faced with the challenge of adapting existing rules and formulating new guidelines to govern the use of generative AI. This technology, capable of creating text and images, has sparked both excitement and apprehension due to its potential to reshape various industries.