Meta AI

There is one thing to consider: whether you have access to the Meta ecosystem.

Who it is for. People who live in a supported country: the assistant is free, appears in every WhatsApp chat, and answers by voice directly through Ray-Ban Meta glasses.

Who else. For those who already wear Ray-Ban Meta or Oakley Meta glasses: the Meta AI app is their required companion, and the assistant itself answers questions about what is currently in front of your eyes.

Who it is not for. People who value conversation privacy. Since Dec 16, 2025, conversations with the assistant feed into the ad profile, and there is no way to turn this off.

A fit? Section 3 will take you to your first question. Choosing between it and ChatGPT: the choice is in section 7.

What vibecoding isStarting from scratch: how to give AI tasks with no coding experience

One assistant and seven doors to it: chat, images, documents, and voice in glasses.

Where it is available. Meta AI appears in WhatsApp and Meta's other apps, in a standalone phone app, on the website meta.ai and in Ray-Ban Meta glasses. Meta itself calls WhatsApp the main gateway (earnings call, Jul 29, 2026); the full list of surfaces and glasses is in the FAQ.

Chat and files. Questions, web search, analysis of photos, PDFs, and spreadsheets. Muse Spark 1.1 has run in the app and on the website since July 2026, while Thinking mode reasons step by step through complex questions. According to the store description, the assistant compiles a report on any topic from many sources in minutes.

Images and video. Since Jul 7, 2026, images have been created by its own Muse Image model: everyday volume is free, more is available with a subscription. Video lives in the Vibes feed, where every clip is AI-generated, while its own Muse Video model was still in development as of 05.09.2026.

Voice and glasses. Since April 2025, voice mode speaks in its own voice rather than reading prepared text, and supports 13 languages. In the glasses, the assistant answers questions about what the camera sees.

Tasks and memory. Since Jul 24, 2026, the assistant creates plans, connects email and calendar, makes slides, and completes tasks for you. Version 287 from Aug 24, 2026 added scheduled tasks, morning briefings, and one-sentence quizzes. Memory about you has been enabled since the app launched in April 2025; it was unavailable in Europe at launch.

What was actually done. We did not put Meta AI through a real task ourselves. The capabilities above come from the vendor's store descriptions, announcements, and press coverage. Meta itself notes that some features are available only in certain countries and languages.

Step 1. The easiest way to start is with glasses or WhatsApp, where the assistant is already installed and nothing needs to be installed separately. In the app and on the website, set the first task by naming the outcome, for example “compile a report on this PDF.”

Apps. On iPhone the app is in the App Store, on Android it sits in Google Play. There is no separate desktop program, the site works there.

Steps checked Sep 5, 2026 through the Meta Help Center and the App Store

Meta counts its audience in billions.

Audience. Meta reported a billion monthly people in its blog on Oct 1, 2025, and this is the latest official figure. In 2026, the company switched to percentages: after moving to Muse Spark, the number of people who talk to the assistant every day grew by 60 % (earnings call, Jul 29, 2026). A billion users a month.

Stores. In the US App Store, version 287 from Aug 24, 2026 holds 4.68 from 232 thousand ratings; in Google Play, page metadata shows 4.6 from 2.3 million ratings and more than 100 million installs (captured Sep 5, 2026).

Rank among chats. In Habr's "Best Neural Networks 2025" ranking, Meta AI placed 46th on the web and did not make the mobile list (Aug 28, 2025). There are no independent benchmarks of the assistant itself, and on Sep 2, 2026 Meta compared the new Muse Spark 1.3 only with its own version 1.2.

Meta AI's place among the assistants in our catalog is shown under the card's name, and the whole tool ranking is on a shared page.

There is hardly anything to pay for yet: Meta One paid plans are only just leaving testing.

Free entry. Chat, images, voice, and glasses cost nothing; the app is free in app stores. Your chats are the price: since Dec 16, 2025, they feed your ad profile; details are in section 6.

Paid plans. Meta launched Meta One subscriptions on May 27, 2026, and at launch the press cited $7.99 and $19.99 per month for the assistant. By September, Meta's help center called the consumer plans Core and Premium; they differ in limits for Thinking mode and image and video generation. Meta does not publish prices on its own pages and says the plans are in limited testing and not available everywhere; at launch, they were available in Singapore, Guatemala, and Bolivia.

For developers. Since Jul 9, 2026, the standalone Meta Model API charges $1.25 per million input tokens and $0.15 for cached repeats. Output costs $4.25 on OpenRouter, which Meta itself calls its sales channel. The free tier provides 60 requests per minute.

Two questions: where the chats go and what has already happened to them.

Conversations feed ads. Since Dec 16, 2025, text and voice conversations with the assistant have fed into feed and ad personalization in Facebook*, Instagram*, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Meta offers no separate "don't use conversations" toggle; only general ad settings and avoiding the assistant remain. There are regional exceptions for the EU, UK, and South Korea, while health, religion, and politics are excluded from ad targeting.

Discover showed other people's chats. In June 2025, the app's public feed showed personal conversations: the "Share" button sent chats to a public feed, and many people did not understand this. Meta responded with a sharing warning, while Mozilla called for the feed to be shut down entirely.

Incognito Chat. Since May 13, 2026, WhatsApp and the app have offered a temporary conversation that is not saved or used for training; Meta says even it cannot read it. The conversation ends when you close the app or lock your phone.

Meta Platforms is listed as an extremist organization by the Ministry of Justice, entry 96, pursuant to the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow decision of 21.03.2022. The decision concerns Facebook* and Instagram* and does not apply to WhatsApp; this is stipulated in the list itself. Meta AI is not named in the entry; its status derives from the company.

Age. The age threshold is 13, like Meta's other apps. The App Store rates it 12+, while Google Play says "Everyone."

The choice is not “who is smarter,” but “where you already are.”

Different routes. ChatGPT is a separate chat you go to for an answer. Meta AI sits where people already chat, in WhatsApp, Instagram*, and glasses, so people open it separately less often.

Different price. ChatGPT Plus costs $20 per month, while Meta AI Core is $7.99 at launch pricing, but remains in limited testing. Both have free access; with Meta AI, conversations go into advertising in return, while ChatGPT shows ads on free plans.

Who else is nearby. DeepSeek remains a reference point: the chat opens and you sign up with an email.

Over three years, the assistant grew from a messenger button into a standalone app, switched from open Llama to closed Muse, and gained its first paid plans.