- Meta is planning to release a standalone Meta AI app to challenge the dominance of ChatGPT.
- Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg may unveil the new app by the second quarter of 2025.
- The company might introduce a paid subscription plan for Meta AI. Zuckerberg aims to make Meta AI the leading AI assistant by the end of this year.
After securing a foothold in the social media space, Mark Zuckerberg now wants to make Meta AI the leading assistant in the AI industry. A new report by CNBC says that Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg plans to launch a standalone Meta AI app to compete with ChatGPT. According to people familiar with the matter, the project is confidential, but the company aims to release the Meta AI app in the second quarter of this year.
Currently, Meta AI is integrated into various social media apps including Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Meta believed that this was the best way to integrate AI technologies and bring access to billion+ users. However, Meta is now mulling that releasing a standalone app like ChatGPT would make Meta AI more accessible.
Not only that, the company is also considering launching a paid subscription plan for Meta AI, just like ChatGPT Plus. This will allow the company to offer more powerful models and tools to paid subscribers.
OpenAI, the creator behind ChatGPT, recently reported that it has 400 million weekly active users. In comparison, Meta AI’s standalone website only gets around 10 million hits every month. However, Meta’s Finance head Susan Li says that with Meta AI’s combined usage in various social media apps, it clocks up to 700 million active monthly users.
Even when we account for Meta AI’s collective usage number, it still ranks much below ChatGPT. It appears Zuckerberg is putting significant effort into gaining traction among users with the Meta AI app. Recently, Elon Musk also unveiled the Grok app for iPhone, launched a new standalone website, and the Android app is currently under development.
Meanwhile, reacting to the development, OpenAI chief Sam Altman posted on X, “ok fine maybe we’ll do a social app.” He followed up with, “lol if facebook tries to come at us and we just uno reverse them it would be so funny 🤣“
Big software giants like Google, Microsoft, and Meta are struggling to drive the adoption of AI and offer interesting new use cases. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a recent podcast with Dwarkesh Patel tempered expectations and said:
But by the way, the classic supply side is, “Hey, let me build it and they’ll come.” That’s an argument, and after all we’ve done that, we’ve taken enough risk to go do it. But at some point, the supply and demand have to map. That’s why I’m tracking both sides of it. You can go off the rails completely when you are hyping yourself with the supply-side, versus really understanding how to translate that into real value to customers.
While Meta AI has introduced AI image editing, image generation, voice chat, AI translation, etc. into its social media apps, users are not enamored by these AI-powered features. Instead, users are looking to disable Meta AI in WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook. So what do you think about Meta’s plan to launch a standalone AI app? Are you going to replace ChatGPT with Meta AI? Let us know in the comments below.
