Meta AI App built with Llama 4
about.fb.com
about.fb.com
Maybe their audience is people who can’t be bothered or can’t afford it.
Might as well but the Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses and embrace the exposure already.
This surely would just refer to the massive trove of data Facebook has already gathered about you.
iOS apps are allowed to add arbitrary JavaScript to any page on any domain, even HTTPS, as long as it's a WebView and not the standalone Safari app.
Why does a seemingly privacy-focused Apple create the compromisable WebView system for apps? Is there some weird edge case for apps that they need this, for a non-evil reason?
Although, it does seem like they could get more granular in app approval, which I am sure iOS devs would not like, but users would. For example, "If your app's primary use case is navigation of the open web, you may use WebView to handle 3rd party links. However, if that is not the primary purpose of your app, web links must open in iOS."
Either that, or give me a setting for each app, which the dev can set the default on. "Open links in Safari."
I use Adguard which has a Safari integration that appears to apply to Web Views (based on the absence of ads), though I don’t have proof of that.
I have been wondering about this for a couple years now. Do Safari content filters apply to app WebViews? I assumed not.
Can any iOS dev chime in? I don't have have a modern Mac and dev account to test this at this time.
WebView is very useful for UIs. You're probably using it more than you know in the "native" apps.
Still, would be cool if I had a setting for each app that allows forcing opening 3rd party URLs in Safari, and not WebView, if that is feasible.
The iOS app screenshots are all about Wayfarer AR glasses. Nothing about Meta.AI.
Also probably for App Store SEO/rankings.
Meta is known for scummy behaviour, as we all know…
Why rebrand rather than create a new app? Who knows. Maybe to demonstrate a high(ish) download count at launch, maybe for app/play store credibility.
The models are not sota, the feature set is no stronger than comparable apps, the privacy situation is as expected.
Not seeing it.
Many of those people aren’t particularly tech savvy, and aren’t hip to the latest technology. By embedding “Meta AI” into each app, they’re reaching an audience far greater than can be reached by most non-Google AI products.
Once they get hooked on using Meta AI (because it was there, and they didn’t know to search for others), they’re reaching may want a dedicated app.
The HN crowd is indeed overly dismissive of Meta and their reach across numerous markets, and my experience is not the end-all-be-all of data collection of course. But I have yet to see any casual users of anything who give a ghost of a shit about AI. Like I'm not even saying they're anti-AI or skeptics or whatever, I'm saying: any time in the last like 2 years when some product or another has had some damn AI or another integrated into it: reactions range from indifference to irritation.
Most I've seen is people see it, wonder what it is, ask it a few things, and then get bored with it and go back to what they were doing.
"Here, this is what we spied from you last year. Consider most data brokers have already shamelessly traded with this info. Be more careful this year.
Regards, Mark."
I guess it was to be expected, but I hate meta products with passion and removed them from phone many years ago (when they were leeching battery hard even when not used), cancerous leech of humanity for the goal of getting fer people ridiculously rich and richer.
Partly the sheen has worn off, and of course there are other interesting "open source" llm offerings now, but I don't think it can be overstated how much Meta is just a toxic brand.
Threads had a very similar arc.
I’m on the fence about their API product( technically they could tie it to one’s identity (as OpenAI could) but I’d imagine that would be less valuable given they can’t know which human is really behind it.
The Chinese are the real driver of open source/open weights models now. China's brand is overtaking Meta's, and US (corporations) in general.
Beyond the fact it's possible that they were counting Instagram users in those metrics, yeah, people are going to sign up to try the new thing
But it's what you came to expect from Zuckerberg, absolutely no way to control the feed at all, poor excuse for federation
My theory is you have these app "fiefdoms" that are run by different product managers and all of them are trying to steal users from the other product to show that their product is driving growth. So you end up with 10 apps that implement 90% of the same features.
Mark Zuckerberg suggested wiping everyone’s Facebook friends and making users start again to boost the platform’s relevance - https://fortune.com/2025/04/15/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-inst... | https://archive.today/01pLO
What a tool.
> Now he’s talking publicly for the first time. Under pressure from Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg to monetize WhatsApp, he pushed back as Facebook questioned the encryption he'd helped build and laid the groundwork to show targeted ads and facilitate commercial messaging. Acton also walked away from Facebook a year before his final tranche of stock grants vested. “It was like, okay, well, you want to do these things I don’t want to do,” Acton says. “It’s better if I get out of your way. And I did.” It was perhaps the most expensive moral stand in history. Acton took a screenshot of the stock price on his way out the door—the decision cost him $850 million.
> It’s also a story any idealistic entrepreneur can identify with: What happens when you build something incredible and then sell it to someone with far different plans for your baby? “At the end of the day, I sold my company,” Acton says. “I sold my users’ privacy to a larger benefit. I made a choice and a compromise. And I live with that every day.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/parmyolson/2018/09/26/exclusive...
https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2025/4/15/mark-zuckerberg-...
Their AI doesn't work in my country and honestly I don't feel left out. Whatever
They've become the parody of how to do AI tools badly. It's disgusting.
No thanks.
https://gizmodo.com/meta-says-its-latest-ai-model-is-less-wo...
Never thought that once we had Skype we'll still not solve video calls cross-platform on every bloody device by 2025, including, but not limited to, linux, TVs, Android boxes, Chromecast with Google TV, and so on.
I really want to get off Whatsapp, but everyone simply refuses to do so out of simplicity, lazyness, and ignorance.
Signal is the easy and obvious alternative.
XMPP/Matrix are different paths that also work (and both rely on TURN/STUN, like everything), but that requires someone running those servers in your vicinity of friends.
I grew up with some relatively minor food insecurity, and so outsourcing my food and beverage choice to a soulless machine sounds like my own personal hell.
Oh, hey, is that an ad for a local winery?
The wine it chose was how far down the list? Was it chosen at random or did it just match “chicken wine” with the first result?
This seems like you’re assuming the glasses help you decide but really it probably did what anyone would do and pick a random option or just give you the popular choice. Why even use glasses for that and instead just point somewhere on the menu?
The above criteria is how I would evaluate best value of menu items. If an LLM just gave me the cheapest of 3 dishes I wouldn’t use it because it is not adding any agency I already had.
Here’s another possible scenario:
The LLM retrieved “best value” or some relative synonym from the online review of the restaurant. The review says “I think the chicken marsala is the best value.” The review was posted 5 years ago and the portion sizes have changed when the new owner wanted to shrinkflate the food. Is chicken marsala still the best value? Was it ever the best value?
You do you, by all means, if it brings you the most joy. But removing my own agency while allowing a company to track my entire dining experience to better serve me ads sounds so... hollow and dystopic.
Made me tempted to buy one.
A question I have is, how are you presented with the prompt result?
Does it send you a message on your phone or does it tell you in a headphone?
And you you ask it verbally or can you also ask it using mobile phone?
You can do both text or audio.
AI is becoming more and more of a commodity. What does the FB one offer to make up for its terrible reputation?
Ironically in large part due to Meta releasing their models. For now at least, we'll see how long their commitment to open weights lasts when the time comes to actually justify the tens of billions they're spending on all this.