With 500 million users in India, WhatsApp is significantly advancing Meta’s aspirations in artificial intelligence.
On Wednesday, Meta’s CFO, Susan Li, highlighted India as Meta AI’s biggest user base, marking a significant achievement since its introduction there just months prior.
Li stated in the earnings call for the second quarter that Meta AI has processed billions of queries since its inception.
“India’s burgeoning WhatsApp usage, marked by strong retention and engagement rates, aligns with its status as our top territory for Meta AI,” she added.
Originally introduced in the United States last year, Meta AI spans Instagram, Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, and web services. The technology saw an enhancement this April with the implementation of the Llama 3 model, subsequently extending its reach to over a dozen nations.
Though trials for Meta AI commenced in India around this period, widespread access was delayed until June, following the country’s national elections.
Navigating cultural sensitivities while tailoring AI for India posed certain challenges for Meta. As reported by TechCrunch in May, the AI tended to depict Indian men wearing turbans predominantly. Following complaints in July about Meta AI’s selective religious humor on platform X, adjustments were made to the algorithm to ensure equitable treatment concerning religious jokes.
The platform expanded its language support recently to include French, German, Hindi, Hindi-Romanized Script, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish, amongst others. Consequently, Meta AI’s footprint has grown to encompass 22 nations, with Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, and Mexico being the latest additions.
According to Zuckerberg, the forthcoming Llama 4 model will demand an approximately tenfold increase in computing power for its training.
“Training Llama 4 is anticipated to require nearly ten times the computing resources utilized for Llama 3, and we expect this trend of escalating computational demand to persist with future models,” Zuckerberg elaborated during the discussion.
Besides AI, notable growth was observed in Meta’s social platforms, with the newcomer Threads nearing 200 million users. This follows a previous update stating the platform had surpassed 175 million active participants. Moreover, Zuckerberg pointed out encouraging engagement metrics among young adults in the U.S. on Facebook.
Correction: The observations concerning the significance of India for Meta AI and its usage were inaccurately ascribed to Mark Zuckerberg. These insights were provided by CFO Susan Li.
Compiled by Techarena.au.
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