Meta Uses Personas in Chatbots for Better User Retention

To increase user retention, Meta is getting ready to provide a variety of AI chatbots

The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that Meta Platforms is prepared to provide a variety of chatbots driven by artificial intelligence that have distinct personalities as early as September.

According to a source citing people with knowledge of the plans, Meta has been developing chatbot prototypes that can interact with users in a way that is akin to having a real conversation as the business works to increase user engagement on its social media platforms.

The social media behemoth, situated in Menlo Park, California, is even looking at an AI chatbot that mimics Abraham Lincoln's speech patterns and another that offers trip suggestions in the manner of a surfer, according to the story. These chatbots' functions will include new search functionality and suggestion-giving.

The news of the survey comes as Meta executives work to increase user retention for their new text-based app, Threads, which lost more than half of its users in the weeks after its introduction on July 5.

Reuters's request for comment from Meta was not immediately fulfilled. In its earnings report released last week, the parent company of Facebook revealed a sharp increase in advertising income and forecasted third-quarter revenue that was higher than expected by the market.

With the help of the hype around cutting-edge AI technology and a push for austerity that has seen the corporation lay off some 21,000 workers since last autumn, the company has been recovering from a painful 2022.

According to a July article by Bloomberg News, Apple is developing artificial intelligence (AI) products that compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Bard. The article also stated that Apple has developed its framework, called "Ajax," for building extensive language models and is now testing a chatbot that some developers refer to as "Apple GPT."