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