According to ExtremeTech, Meta AI is a suite of AI tools embedded across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, VR, and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses, with a web version at Meta.ai. It’s powered by the LLaMA family of large language models, with the latest LLaMA 4 generation featuring variants like Scout, Maverick, and a preview of Behemoth. The company claims it’s available in over 200 countries via its apps, but it’s blocked in the entire EU due to GDPR conflicts. Critically, there is no way to fully disable Meta AI once it rolls out to your account, and it collects a vast array of behavioral, content, and device data. The article also notes that Meta’s “open-source” label for LLaMA faces major pushback from groups like the Free Software Foundation, which calls it nonfree software.
The Social Media Spine
Here’s the thing that really sets Meta AI apart from a ChatGPT or Gemini: it’s not a standalone tool you visit. It’s the connective tissue, the operating system, for the world’s largest social network. Its primary job isn’t to write your essay or code. It’s to keep you scrolling, liking, and sharing. It manicures your feed, suggests friends, powers search, and tags your photos. That’s a fundamentally different purpose than most other AIs, and it’s baked into the experience so deeply that opting out is basically impossible. You’re not just using a product with AI features; you’re inside the AI.
The “Open-Source” Fight
This is where it gets juicy. Meta loves to tout LLaMA as open-source, but that claim is, frankly, a battlefield. Groups like the Free Software Foundation have outright rejected it, calling LLaMA 3.1 nonfree. Academics have accused Meta of “openwashing”—using the buzzword to describe what is essentially closed, source-available software. The criticism is brutal: undocumented training data, poor technical docs, and licenses that aren’t compatible with real open-source ideals. So why does Meta push the narrative? It builds developer goodwill and creates a ecosystem around their models, all while retaining ultimate control. It’s a clever, if controversial, strategy.
Data: The Unavoidable Cost
Want to know what Meta AI collects? Basically, everything. Your likes, your watch time, your searches, your location (with permission), the photos you post. The company is upfront about this in its labyrinthine Terms of Service. They claim not to use private messages for training, but that’s a thin reed of comfort. All this data fuels the core business: ad targeting, content moderation, and making the AI itself better at keeping you engaged. The EU’s blockage of Meta AI is a direct result of this insatiable data appetite clashing with GDPR. It’s the entire business model, and the AI is now the most sophisticated engine for that model ever built.
Where This Is All Going
So what’s the trajectory? Meta AI isn’t a chatbot. It’s an environment. The integration into hardware like the Ray-Ban glasses points to a future where the AI is a constant, ambient companion, seeing what you see and hearing what you hear. The technical push towards models that can fit on a single datacenter GPU, as mentioned in their LLaMA 4 announcement, hints at a longer-term goal of on-device AI, which could alleviate some privacy concerns but also further embed the tech into daily life. The competition isn’t really with other chatbots. It’s with the very idea of a non-AI-mediated social experience. And look, Meta is winning that fight by default. For users, the “choice” is increasingly binary: participate in the AI-hygiened metaverse, or log off. There’s no third option.
