Yes, WhatsApp will soon add several AI features to follow the trend. How soon? Soon!
WhatsApp has a beta program on Google Play. Meaning that you can sign-up for it, and you’ll receive the latest beta versions of WhatsApp to try the new features before they get published onto the final version. You’ll also get new bugs though, that’s the downside.
WhatsApp Meta Ask AI
Anyway, a recent beta version was mentioned (2.24.7.14) and in it WhatsApp shows how it is preparing to introduce the ability to ask questions to the Meta Artificial Intelligence (Meta Ask AI) chat bot, directly from the application’s search bar. This is Meta’s alternative to ChatGPT. Not only that, but WhatsApp will also add AI photo editing capabilities.
This new AI functionality is still in development, but it promises to make interacting with the AI a simple and intuitive process, eliminating the need to manually initiate a conversation with the Meta AI. Not only that, but WhatsApp will suggest questions to help users start interacting with the AI, improving the communication process and simplifying AI-based assistance.
If you’ve ever used ChatGPT, Copilot or the pro-woke Gemini, Meta AI will look familiar because it looks pretty much the same. However, one advantage this chatbot will have is that instead of opening another app, you will simply type the question into WhatsApp’ search bar. If you decide that this feature is of no use to you or you simply prefer not to use it, you can continue using WhatsApp as you always have without interacting with the AI component. I know that’s what I’ll do as I’m sick of all this AI hype that sounds cool, but in the end doesn’t help me that much. I prefer to write naturally sounding messages where I express what I feel, without trying to fake it by allowing AI to write my own communications.
WhatsApp will continue to work normally for messaging, calling and other features it offers without the AI.
I honestly don’t know how advanced Meta Ask AI is yet, but I’ll be asking it a few questions when it’s available. The first one will be what does WhatsApp do with my messages, does it use that data to train its own AI? And if there’s something I hate, is using AI for support questions, because if I end up contacting support I want to talk to an operator!
WhatsApp Image Editing AI
While the chatbot AI feature in WhatsApp is meh, not too interesting for now, another AI feature might be. On March 22, WhatsApp also announced creative and personalization features for AI-powered photo editing. The AI photo editing tool will allow users to apply various artistic effects to photos. One such feature will be “backdrop“, where users will be able to change the background of their own photos with ease. Take that travel influencers, I’ll be able to share my photo as I’m standing on a beautiful beach and not in my back-killer chair.
There will also be a “restyle” feature that will give users a tool to transform the style of their photos, giving them an artistic look. Pretty much what your smartphone camera app most likely already knows what to do. In addition, the “extend” feature will allow upscaling (AI upscale) of the entire image, providing the ability to adjust the size of photos as needed. Now this will be useful, imagine taking a photo of something, and being able to enlarge it – dickpicks will never look the same again!
At the moment, most of these new AI features are under development and WhatsApp will introduce them one by one in the next updates. In a post from 2023, WhatsApp announced that they’ll add even more AI features this year: AI stickers & AI Image generators (on top of the AI chat feature).
Artificial intelligence seems like a never-ending topic at the moment and big companies relentlessly throw new AI-powered features at their users. No one seems to be asking users how interested they are or how much they need AI in their lives. I can’t wait for its 15 minutes of fame to fade off.
