Meta's AI chatbot expands to more WhatsApp users globally

Mark Zuckerberg's Meta embraced artificial intelligence (AI) last September when it launched its AI chatbot and its elements are now being integrated into its products like WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger, according to Android Police.

Although WhatsApp, the company's instant-messaging app, has been slow to adopt AI features, but this could change soon as the app is now expanding Meta AI's search bar integration to more users which was initially limited to certain regions, according to WABetaInfo.

WhatsApp's generative AI integration was first introduced in November, and a recent Android beta update introduced the AI chatbot to the app's search bar.

However, the experiment now appears to be live for both iOS and Android users, but WABetaInfo hasn't specified a particular version of the app that enables this.

Previous screenshots from the iOS version obtained by WABetaInfo already gave a glimpse of the revamped search bar on Android.

Thanks to the latest update, WhatsApp now allows users to access Meta AI by tapping a dedicated icon in the top right of the Chats tab, though it's unclear if this feature will be available in future updates.

Despite a boost from Meta AI, the search bar is expected to maintain standard functionality like finding specific messages, groups, or contacts. 

According to WABetaInfo, Meta AI's data will not be shared with Meta's servers unless the user asks a question, and the recommended prompts shown by Meta AI are random, without any user data collected to tailor these them.