Meta has spent the last couple years giving its self-titled AI chatbot prominent placement in its apps and now it’s Threads’ turn. The company is starting to test a new feature that gives the Meta AI chatbot Grok-like functionality on Threads, with the ability to reply to posts with additional “context.”
To do this, Meta AI is getting an official Threads account (@meta.ai) that users can chat with alongside their other conversations in the app. The feature, which the company describes as an “early beta” will be rolling out first to Threads users in Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Argentina, and Singapore.
The premise sounds a lot like the original intention of Grok. Meta suggests that users could ask questions like “why are people talking about the World Cup this month?” and Meta AI will be able to publicly reply. Users can also invoke Meta AI in replies to other posts. This is a very common use case on X, where seemingly every viral post has at least one prominent reply asking Grok some variation of “is this true???”
Of course, giving an AI chatbot so much visibility on a platform like Threads could pose some of its own challenges. On X, Grok has famously gone on pro-Nazi rants, spewed sycophantic praise for Elon Musk and generated a staggering amount of child abuse material. Meta has generally been more cautious around safeguards for its AI chatbot than X has with Grok, which was always billed as a kind of AI edgelord. Still, it’s reasonable to wonder whether the Threads feature could be prone to the same type of user-driven manipulation that X has blamed some of Grok’s more high-profile stumbles on.
Meta is, at least, offering a way for people to ignore the new Meta AI account on Threads. The company notes that users can opt to mute the account and hide replies that appear under their own posts.
The Threads test was announced amid a broader push for the newly revamped Meta AI, which is now powered by the company’s latest Muse Spark model. In addition to the bot on Threads, Meta is testing a new way for people to chat with Meta AI about the happenings in their group chats on WhatsApp and other apps. Much like on Threads, these “side chats” as the company is calling them, are meant to give people a way to query the bot for additional “context” based on what’s going on in the group thread. But, unlike Threads, these chats take place in their own Meta AI chat and are only visible to the person asking Meta AI to weigh in, not the entire group.
Elsewhere, the new Spark model is also powering a new in-app version of Live AI in the Meta AI app. Previously only available via Meta’s smart glasses, Live AI lets users ask questions about their surroundings and get real-time answers about whatever their phone’s camera is pointing at. (One word of caution: Live AI was at the center of a recent report that claimed human moderators were viewing recordings of these sessions, which sometimes featured intimate moments. So keep in mind there’s a chance that human eyes could see whatever you’re asking Meta AI about.)
And, speaking of Meta’s glasses, the company says that the Spark model is starting to roll out to its lineup of Ray-Ban and Oakley-branded glasses in the US and Canada, and will be coming to its display-enabled frames this summer.
Muse Spark has been the first major release from Meta’s “superintelligence” group as the company tries to lay a new foundation for its AI work in the post-Llama era. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also hinted about the company’s plans for OpenClaw-like AI agents that will run on some version of the model.
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