Meta AI
Meta AI is Meta's AI assistant, built into WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, and available on its own at meta.ai.
Meta AI is the AI assistant made by Meta. It's built into WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, so people can ask it questions without leaving the app they're in, and it's also available on its own at meta.ai.
Because it sits inside apps people already use every day, it can reach people who would never open a separate AI chatbot.
How it gets its answers
Like the other assistants, Meta AI runs on a large language model, Meta's own Llama family. For questions about current things it can search the web. Meta runs its own bots for that, which you can find in Meta's list of web crawlers.
The one that matters most for answers is meta-webindexer, which Meta says crawls the web to improve Meta AI's search results. If your robots.txt blocks it, Meta AI has less of your site to draw on.
Why it's different
Meta AI is often used inside a chat. People ask it something in the middle of talking to friends, or in a group. That means the questions can be more casual and local, and the answers are often short.
For example, someone in a WhatsApp group planning a weekend in Bristol might ask Meta AI "good coffee shops near the station?" They'll see two or three names, and may never click through to a website at all.
In AnswerOrbit
Meta AI isn't one of the six platforms we ask. We ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Copilot, Google AI Overviews and Google AI Mode. See How we count. The Audit tab in Website shows which AI bots your robots.txt lets in.