Meta Platforms Inc. is bringing a whole new way to interact with artificial intelligence on its platform, the company announced today during its Meta Connect event, with the introduction of new AI experiences that include image generation and new AI assistants.

Until now Meta has focused on conversational AI with its Llama 2 generative AI foundation model, which can help create chatbots, and the company hasn’t talked that often about other types of models that can create images. Today Meta introduced new tools that use its new image generation model Emu, or Expressive Media Universe.

With a new feature, select users over the next month will be able to create AI generated stickers in WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram and Facebook Stories using English prompts just by typing in whatever they want. Using technology that combines Llama 2 and Emu, it will turn whatever they type into high quality emoji stickers that they can then embed in their text messages and stories.

“Every day people send hundreds of millions of stickers to express things in chats,” said Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg. “And every chat is a little bit different and you want to express subtly different emotions. But today we only have a fixed number — but with Emu now you have the ability to just type in what you want.”

The same foundational model has been in testing as an image editing tool in Instagram that can modify photos that allows people to restyle and change portions of the image. For example, users could take a picture of their friend and ask Emu to change an image into watercolor, to make it out of yarn, into a stained-glass window, or even a more detailed prompt such as “a quilt made out of patches of Scottish tartans.”

The AI could also be asked to take the primary subject of the image and change the scene background and put them somewhere else. For example, “Put me in front of the Eiffel tower,” or “surrounded by a pile of kittens,” could be used to change the backdrop.

AI assistants in every app

Meta is bringing a large number of new AI assistants online across its entire platform that will be able to interact with users just like other people. They will even have their own profiles on Facebook and Instagram and users will be able to contact them just like they would anyone else.

“Advances in AI allow us to create different AI personas to help us get different things done,” Zuckerberg said. “Our view is that people are going to want to interact with a bunch of different AIs for the different things that you want to do.”

The first AI, however, is just a basic chatbot assistant named Meta AI that can be called up in messaging apps to provide information for questions and requests. It’s powered by Meta’s Llama 2 large language model but also has access to real-time information in partnership with Microsoft Corp. and Bing Search.

That makes it a powerful tool for uncovering information when users need it most. It is also integrated with Emu, mentioned above, so tagging it with “/imagine” will automatically have it produce custom images.

It’s possible to call up the AI in any chat interface by typing “@Meta AI.” It could be used to help gather information at any time in any conversation — perhaps just to help settle a debate, or to get facts about a problem that nobody in a chat knows enough about. It could also be used to answer questions about a product or recent news, or to provide relevant context.

The new Meta AI will also be accessible in the company’s new line of Ray-Ban smart glasses, where users can call up the AI assistant by just saying “Hey Meta,” in the same way that people call up Google from an Android phone or Alexa from Amazon devices.

In addition to Meta AI, the company is also introducing much more personal AI characters that serve particular roles such as act as chefs, writing assistants, fitness instructors and others. These characters have been trained to fill these roles and given personalities that fit their particular styles so that they come across as more alive and are also embodied by actors who have given their likenesses to moving images that accompany them.

One example is a dungeon master AI character embodied by Snoop Dogg who can run a “Dungeons & Dragons” campaign for your friends in a Facebook Messenger group chat. There’s also Roy Choi, the Korean-American celebrity cook, as Max, the “King of the Kitchen,” a chef character who will assist with preparing the best dinner. There are currently 28 AI characters in beta played by familiar faces, including Tom Brady, Kendall Jenner and Naomi Osaka.

Each of them has its own unique back story and personality that fits the role and they respond appropriately based on what their particular knowledge base is.

In line with these new features, Meta also introduced AI studio, a platform that will support the creation of new AIs and Meta plans to make it available to developers outside of the company. It has features that make it easy for coders and noncoders alike to build third-party AI capabilities for use in Messenger and WhatsApp.

Businesses will also be able to create AI characters that will be able to reflect their own brands so that their customers will have a friendly “face” to chat with while getting questions answered, shopping or looking for service. Creators will also be able to use the platform to build an AI presence on Facebook.

Coming soon, Zuckerberg mentioned that the AI characters won’t be confined to just the text messaging services in the Meta ecosystem. In the future, the AIs will be embodied also in Meta’s virtual reality app Horizon and get their own virtual avatars where users will be able to visit and talk to them in “virtual person,” opening up new ways to interact with them.

Images: Meta