Meta re-joins the AI Race for better reach & visibility

Meta has come up with two major announcements in recent days. The first is in relation to re-entering the AI race, and the second is in relation to launching Meta Verified Service in limited regions during the initial days.

AI has gone beyond control for now, especially if one considers the way ChatGPT has acted with certain users. There are reports citing that the chatbot suggested the user leave their wife. As a matter of fact, the chatbot once claimed that it had gained access to the webcam of Microsoft employees, enabling it to adjust the setting and manipulate data.

Microsoft has addressed this issue by saying that it is nothing but a bug that requires fixes. It has further explained the issue saying that the chatbot creates an alter-ego after 15 questions as it gets confused.

Elon Musk is one of the people who has come forward to criticize companies racing to build the best AI-based technology. True, since the rat race is not expected to do anything well. A lot of tools are limited to their data set from 2021. Meaning they are not updated with the current information. This has invited criticism from a few news publications that attempted to source news from the bot.

Meta is not new to technology. It previously attempted to launch Galactica to compete in the industry. However, it faced harsh criticism for being politically biased. Needless to say, Meta had to take down the entire product quickly. Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta, tweeted about it, saying that it is not possible to have fun by casually misusing it.

Meta is now re-entering the race with Toolformer, an AI-powered tech that is based on learning without any human intervention. It will simply sample API Calls, execute them, and then merge them with original inputs.

Another update from Meta comes with the company introducing a Twitter-inspired verification service called Meta Verified. It is limited to New Zealand and Australia, where users will have to pay $12 per month and $15 per month for web and mobile versions, respectively.

This was announced by Mark Zuckerberg himself, saying that Meta is currently testing the verification service. Users can verify their accounts on Facebook and Instagram through an official government ID. Furthermore, Meta has launched a subscription plan where an amount of up to $15/month has to be paid by users for Facebook and Instagram. Mark has further highlighted that the objective of rolling out Meta Verified is to enhance authenticity and security across all their services.

Meta Verified is yet to be rolled out in New Zealand and Australia, with a tentative timeline of the current week. Based on the response Meta gets, it will later begin rolling out the verification service to other countries.

Twitter recently announced its verification services in all the major regions, allowing users to pay a monthly fee for getting verified by the platform. In other words, getting that blue tick from Twitter. It is likely that other platforms will soon follow the trend for one purpose or another.