You Can Create Your Own Chatbot Using Meta’s “AI Studio”
Last year, Meta announced a series of AI updates for Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. These new features included things like AI stickers, AI image editing, celebrity chatbots, and an AI meta assistant that you can’t turn off . During this time, the company also announced AI Studio, a platform allowing developers to create their own artificial intelligence bots for meta products. Now Meta is extending that access to you by inviting all users to create any AI bot they want.
Custom AI bots are not a unique concept: OpenAI offers, for example, GPT , which allows you to create your own versions of ChatGPT. Meta does something similar with AI Studio: you tell the platform exactly what you’re looking for in a chatbot, and it creates it for you without the need for any coding experience . If you want a bot that offers tips for cooking specifically with an air fryer, you can do that. If you want a bot that specializes in gardening tips, you can ask AI Studio to generate one.
Meta is also positioning it as a tool that allows creators to create their own versions of AI. For the company, their platform will allow creators to infuse enough of their knowledge and personality into the bot so that it can answer user questions realistically and accurately. We’ll have to think about it.
Meta says the AI studio is built using Llama 3.1 , the company’s latest class of AI models, so it will be interesting to see how it performs compared to other dedicated AI products.
Most of the AI applications I’ve seen so far still haven’t convinced me, and I’m not sure Meta’s AI Studio will make me believe in them. After all, AI still has a lot of problems, including its tendency to just make things up . But if you’re interested, you can create a bot yourself or try one that other Meta users have made.
How to Create a Bot Using Meta’s AI Studio
To get started, go to the Meta AI Studio website and log in to your Instagram account. Alternatively, you can directly go to Instagram, open private messages, start a new message and select AI chats to start.
Whichever method you use to access AI Studio, you’ll find a range of different bots to chat with. They are made by other Meta users who decided to publish their bots. If you have a specific type of bot in mind, you can search for it, but otherwise, you can browse the “popular” options. Right now I’m being offered “Skibuddy”, a bot designed to help “flush away mental fatigue” (and a play on the Skibidy toilet meme ); “InfoBot” is a source of “accurate and reliable information”; and “SportsFan Sam,” a sports chatbot.
You can choose any of them and start communicating or create your own. On a desktop computer, click Create AI , and on a mobile device, click Create .
From here, you can choose from Meta’s preset characters (Loyal Friend, Attentive Listener, Private Tutor, etc.) or create your own from a custom AI character . Give your character a description of no more than 1000 characters. Meta will generate a profile picture, name and tagline for your bot based on this description, but you can edit them yourself. (For an image, you can simply set a prompt to create a new image.) Once you’re happy with your choice, you can choose who can see this bot: you can make it only for yourself, only for your close friends on Instagram, or available to everyone platforms. If you choose the latter, your bot will appear in search and may appear on the AI Studio home page with your account name attached. Keep in mind.
Once you click Create , Instagram will process your bot and it will appear as a new DM. You can start chatting right away, but I’d recommend clicking the Settings cog in the top right corner. You’ll see the same options as when you created your bot, plus some new options. Knowledge allows you to give the bot specific instructions on how to respond to queries. You can provide the bot with background and background information so it knows how to act in specific situations. Conversation allows you to create a welcome message for new chats and offer three icebreakers that will be presented to the user to prompt the bot. I’m not sure why Meta doesn’t give you these options when creating a bot, but they are useful tools for determining a bot’s performance.
Meta actually has an 18-page guide to using AI Studio if you want to really dive deep into the platform.