Exclusive: Meta discusses its WhatsApp AI advantage and the potential for native Llama AI on Android
Meta is one of the few companies that has embraced an open-source design for its artificial intelligence models family, Llama, and has successfully integrated these models into consumer-grade apps like WhatsApp, Instagram, and more. This was a key message at Meta's Build With AI Summit, held in Bengaluru on October 23. Meta AI was launched in India earlier this year, in June, and since then, millions of WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger users have used it within these apps' user interfaces. In fact, it's visible as soon as you open WhatsApp, right above your messages.
This integration is what sets Meta apart from competitors like ChatGPT and Gemini, offering an AI bot directly within WhatsApp, which has hundreds of millions of users in India. To explore this alleged advantage, Hindustan Times Tech's Shaurya Sharma spoke exclusively to Manohar Paluri, VP, AI at Meta. Paluri also emphasised how Llama, as an open-source family of models, could power India-centric use cases.
“The mission is to connect people and provide the best products to connect them to information and each other. The advantage of Meta AI isn't just the performance of the Llama engine, but also its availability on apps people already use. It brings utility and expands possibilities,” Manohar Paluri, VP, Meta said.
Paluri described how something as basic as bedtime stories can be transformed using Meta AI, instead of being confined to printed storybooks. He said, “I have a five-year-old and a four-year-old, and at night we tell them stories. They pick their favorite phrase, and then I immediately use Meta AI to imagine that phrase, and then the world is your imagination.”
Paluri says that another major advantage with Meta AI is the ability to invoke it in group chats. This allows for real-time information gathering and debunking within the conversation. “It becomes an important way to educate and inform,” he said.
“So one of the advantages is not just the distribution of it—that definitely helps Meta, and
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