It looks like this year will be remembered as the year when every tech giant raced to make its version of AI chatbot a staple of our daily lives. While Google Gemini and ChatGPT are currently the top contenders, Meta has been comparatively sluggish in integrating meta AI into its popular apps — Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp — making it easier than ever to chat with Meta’s AI chatbot.
But what about the people who do not have the patience to type long messages for AI chatbots? Well, WABetaInfo has uncovered a new feature in the WhatsApp beta for Android (version 2.24.16.10) that will enable users to send voice messages to Meta AI. Earlier, communication with Meta AI was limited to text and image-based interactions.
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Meta AI To Make Life Easy For Bad Texters
A screenshot shared by the outlet hints that sending voice messages to Meta AI could work very similarly to how it works in regular conversations. While there are no details about the languages that Meta AI will support for voice messaging, given WhatsApp’s popularity in South Asian countries, Meta is likely to prioritize multilingual support.
The bigger question now is whether the new voice chat feature will allow Meta AI to perform specific functions within WhatsApp, such as replying to messages or giving responses, or if it will primarily act as a general voice assistant for tasks like web searches and recommendations.
If it is more towards the latter, Meta AI could witness tough competition from the default voice assistants that our smartphones already come with. We’ll be eager to see how this new feature unfolds in the coming months. The voice chat feature is currently available to a select number of beta testers, but it should soon be available to a broader user base.
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WhatsApp To Soon Allow Message Reactions With Double-Tap
WhatsApp is getting a new feature that will make it easy for users to react to messages. Similar to Facebook and Instagram, the Meta-owned instant messaging service is rolling out a new functionality that allows users to react to messages with the heart emoji by simply double-tapping on it.
While this functionality seems really useful, users will no longer have to long press on a message to react with the heart emoji, if users want to react with the thumbs up or any other emojis, it can only be done using the old method.
As per a report from WABetaInfo, the double tap to react functionality is currently available to those on WhatsApp for Android 2.24.16.7 beta and will be coming to the stable channel sometime later. However, it looks like there is no option to disable the behavior, and it might end up being frustrating for users who might accidentally react to older messages while going through their chat history.