Facebook parent Meta Platforms launches standalone AI assistant app

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(Reuters) -Facebook parent Meta Platforms on Tuesday launched a separate app for its Meta AI assistant, similar to those offered by Microsoft-backed OpenAI and Alphabet’s Google.

The standalone app comes as Meta looks to boost the AI assistant’s usage, apart from being available within the company’s family of platforms – WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger.

It also signals CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s move to strengthen the company’s position in the competitive AI landscape, taking on major rivals such as OpenAI and Google.

Meta’s separate app will provide more personalized responses based on context and other user-specific elements related to the user’s Facebook and Instagram accounts.

Llama 4, Meta’s latest large language model, powers the Meta AI assistant and is designed to rival the latest AI models from OpenAI, Google, Deepseek and Anthropic, with improved reasoning, multilingual capabilities and efficiency.

The new app will integrate with Meta’s AI glasses and merge with the existing companion app, the company said.

Meta is hosting its first-ever AI developer event, dubbed LlamaCon, on Tuesday, which will center around its Llama family of AI models.

The Instagram owner is set to report its first-quarter results on Wednesday after markets close.

Meta will start testing a paid subscription for the AI chatbot’s advanced versions in the second quarter, Reuters had reported in February.

However, the subscription service might not rake in meaningful revenue until next year at the earliest, a source had said.

Meta AI, which was launched in September 2023, is a virtual assistant that uses large language models to perform reasoning tasks.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas)