- Facebook and Instagram now have Llama 3 integrated into their search fields.
- This is confusing. We’re used to using the search bar for looking up people, groups, or tags.
- And the suggestions for searches are oddly chipper and G-rated.
Thanks for signing up!
Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you’re on the go.
Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram have integrated Meta AI into the search fields of their mobile apps. And it’s getting weird.
The search bar in the Facebook and Instagram apps is one place you probably know very well. You’ve searched plenty of things there —the names of people you went to high school with, a local business whose page you want to find, a celebrity whose latest controversial post everyone is talking about.
We all know what to expect in the search bar of Facebook and Instagram: You find things — people, pages, groups, tags, locations — that already exist on Facebook and Instagram.
What you are not expecting is an artificial-intelligence chatbot interface that can do any number of things completely unrelated to Instagram or Facebook: generate an image for you, answer questions, give advice about things, etc.
This creates a really odd situation. You come to the Facebook search bar to type in the name of your local Buy Nothing group, but instead, you see an animated blue circle with “Ask Meta AI anything.”
Huh???
On Instagram, the search suggestions are slightly more Instagram-y, like “5 tips for glowing skin,” “Cheerleading reels,” and “Write a spring fashion guide.” The request for cheerleading reels does lead to a suggestion of a bunch of other reels.
I asked the Meta AI whether there was a difference between the AI used for Facebook and Instagram, and it told me, “While the core LLaMA 3 model remains the same, its applications and fine-tuning differ on Instagram and Facebook to cater to each platform’s unique requirements and user experiences.” A representative for Meta told me that this wasn’t exactly true — a standard case of an AI hallucination.
For me, what feels strangest isn’t whether Llama 3 is “good” at answering these queries — or noticeably better or worse than any competing AI. It works, but the best things going for it are that it’s fast with its output, it’s free, and it’s right there in an app I already use a lot.
And if Meta’s goal here is to get people’s feet wet with the idea of using generative AI — without having to download a different app or think up ideas of what to ask it — well, mission accomplished.
It’s part of Meta’s push into an AI arms race, and one where it’s well equipped with more compute power. Meta also has an edge when it comes to getting its large language model into the hands of as many users as possible to try it out: It has a lot of humans who open its apps every day and search stuff in the search bar.
So, yes, jamming Meta AI into the search bar feels really weird and confusing, but Meta isn’t shy about muscling new features on users — even if they complain — to get the new feature adopted by a critical mass of users (cough reels cough).
But for we gremlins who are used to searching for old flames, new acquaintances, celebrities, and embarrassing other things in the Instagram search bar, this is certainly a strange new world.
Update: May 1, 2024 — This story has been updated with a comment from Meta.