Meta showed its new generative AI capabilities for Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and internal use this week. At an all-hands meeting, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced several AI technologies in development, including AI chatbots for Messenger and WhatsApp, AI stickers, and other tools for photo editing in Instagram Stories, as well as internal-only products like an AI productivity assistant and an experimental interface for interacting with AI agents powered by Meta’s large language model LLaMA.

Axios originally reported on consumer-facing AI assistants and photo editing tools. The bigger talk covered several areas where Meta is developing AI technologies and its predictions for the future.

The business also announced a July generative AI hackathon that could lead to new AI solutions for Meta’s users.

During his Q1 earnings, Zuckerberg said he was researching deploying new AI technology in products with billions of customers.

During the investor call, Zuckerberg originally hinted at Meta’s plans to investigate “chat experiences” in WhatsApp and Messenger and visual creation tools for Facebook and Instagram posts. Zuckerberg presented these initiatives with Meta’s VP of Engineering, Generative AI, Ahmad Al-Dahle.

Meta’s AI chatbots, or AI agents, would let users communicate with AIs with unique personas and skills to aid and entertain them.

As demand for AI chatbots rises, this consumer market segment is getting more attention and investment. Character is a top app. It stated AI, built by Google researchers who helped build LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications), had over 1.7 million additional installs in a week. Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) led the $150 million Series A fundraising. The software competes with several other chatbot apps on the software Store, like Replika, which lets users create their own AI characters, writing aids, and personal assistants.

Zuckerberg told staff that Meta would first release its AI agents on Messenger and WhatsApp, but it may later expand them across its family of apps and too smart eyewear. In those circumstances, users would use smart glasses like Meta’s Ray-Ban Stories to speak to agents. An airport user could ask the agent what to do in the city for two hours during a layover. Users might ask the agent to answer queries in certain ways, like a text-based agent. Project Aria and Meta’s Research Lab are building smart glasses with AI dialogue, but Ray-Ban Stories are sunglasses.

At the conference, Meta said it was testing AI to let users edit their Instagram Stories photographs by responding to a text prompt. This follows consumer enthusiasm for iforAI picture editors, including the viral AI avatar trend that sent Lensa AI to the top of the App Store last year. Wonder, a word-to-AI photo app, is popular.

Meta wants to add text-prompted AI stickers to Messenger. Another concept, which has yet to undergo internal testing, would let users fill in a prompt to change a photo for Instagram Stories.

Meta’s ad-supported company will make these products free for consumers. Most App Store competitors offer limited AI editing for free but require subscriptions to get all features.

Meta demonstrated various internal uses of generative AI at the seminar. This includes an experimental internal-only portal to an “agents playground” powered by its big language model LLaMA. Metapersonnel could talk to AI agents and give input to enhance its systems. It’s also working with MetaGen, which exposes APIs for Meta’s text and picture generation models for practical use and prototyping. Metamate is an internal productivity assistant that gathers information from internal sources to complete tasks based on user text prompts.

Developers may use Metamate to uncover problems in dogfooded goods, while others could reschedule meetings.

Meta told TechCrunch its first consumer-facing solutions will appear this year, likely in the next months.

“In the last year, we’ve seen some incredible breakthroughs—qualitative breakthroughs—on generative AI, and that allows us to take that technology, push it forward, and build it into every single one of our products,” Zuckerberg said during the presentation. He continued, “We’re going to play an important and unique role in the industry in bringing these capabilities to billions of people in new ways that other people won’t do.