Meta announces chatbots with 'personality', 'limitations'

The news: US tech giant Meta has announced new chatbots that will provide expertise with personality on the company's messaging apps. The main chatbot, Meta AI, is based on Meta's large language model Llama 2. Some of the chatbots will be voiced by celebrities including Snoop Dogg, Kendall Jenner, Tom Brady and Naomi Osaka.

The numbers: Meta will launch 28 of the chatbots in beta mode, initially for US users only on WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Facebook Stories. Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg said the chatbots were still a work in progress, with limitations, appearing to confirm some of the issues outlined recently by the Wall Street Journal.

The context: Meta's announcement is the latest in a huge year for artificial intelligence, with multiple tech companies in a race to produce the most accurate, adaptive and personalised AI. Meta, Google, Alibaba and Snapchat have all released AI-powered chatbots since the release of Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022. TikTok is also reported to be developing an in-app AI chatbot.