Meta may soon welcome another member into its family of apps, with sources telling CNBC the company plans to debut a stand-alone application for its Meta AI artificial-intelligence-powered assistant during the second quarter of this year.
A paid subscription and more robust Meta AI service will also be tested, those sources told CNBC, similar to the more advanced versions of Microsoft’s Copilot and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, where people pay monthly fees.
The stand-alone Meta AI app is aimed at furthering CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s goal to surpass the AI efforts of competitors including Google and OpenAI by the end of 2025, sources told CNBC.
Google released a stand-alone app for its Gemini last February, while Elon Musk’s X debuted its Grok app in January.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to the CNBC story with a post on X saying, “OK, fine, maybe we’ll do a social app.”
CNBC noted an exchange that took place on Instagram’s Threads stand-alone app, where a user pushed for a stand-alone Meta AI app and Zuckerberg replied with a red 100 emoji, usually used to agree.
Zuckerberg touted Meta AI during the company’s fourth-quarter-2024 earnings call in late January. “I expect this is going to be the year when a highly intelligent and personalized AI assistant reaches more than 1 billion people, and I expect Meta AI to be that leading AI assistant. Meta AI is already used by more people than any other assistant, and once a service reaches that kind of scale, it usually develops a durable long-term advantage. We have a really exciting roadmap for this year with a unique vision focused on personalization.”
