Meta AI

There is one thing to count: whether you have access to the Meta* world, because there is no such access from Russia.

Who it is for. For those who live in a supported country or have a foreign Meta* account: the assistant is free, sits in every WhatsApp chat, and answers by voice right from 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. For those in Russia looking for a ChatGPT replacement: the app is unavailable in Russian stores, WhatsApp has been blocked since February 2026, and Meta* does not open the website and app in every country. And for those who value chat privacy. Since 16.12.2025, conversations with the assistant go into an ad profile, and this cannot be disabled.

A fit? Section 3 will take you to the first question. Choosing between it and ChatGPT: the fork 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. The Meta AI button sits 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 door (investor call, 29.07.2026); 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 07.07.2026, 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 24.07.2026, the assistant creates plans, connects email and calendar, makes slides, and completes tasks for you. Version 287 from 24.08.2026 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 have not run Meta AI through a task ourselves: it is officially unavailable from Russia. 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.

From Russia, there is one door, and it is on the foreign side.

From Russia, you can use it only with a foreign account. Officially, Meta* says the app and website are not available in every country, but does not publish a list of countries. The app is unavailable in the Russian App Store and RuStore, but is available in the Kazakhstan and Belarus storefronts; we checked this on 05.09.2026. WhatsApp, the main door to the assistant, has been blocked in Russia since 12.02.2026.

Step 1. Change your Russian IP address to a foreign one: American, Dutch, or any other. The website technically responds from Russian addresses, which we checked from nodes in Moscow and St. Petersburg on 05.09.2026, but foreign reviews indicate the service also determines the country from the account.

Step 2. Sign in with your foreign Meta* account. Without signing in, the website shows only a login window.

Step 3. 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 available in the US, Kazakhstan, and Belarus App Stores; it is unavailable in the Russian storefront. On Android, it is in Google Play; we have not checked installation for an account from Russia. There is no standalone desktop program; the website works there.

In Russian. We could not find an official Meta* list of assistant languages. The app interface has not been translated into Russian; it is absent from the App Store's list of 39 localizations, and voice is listed in 13 languages, without Russian. We did not test Russian-language responses.

Steps verified 05.09.2026 against Meta* help pages, the App Store and RuStore storefronts, and tests from check-host nodes in Moscow and St. Petersburg · we did not access it ourselves from Russia

Meta* counts its audience in billions, while the assistant gets eight and a half thousand searches per month in Russia.

Audience. Meta* named one billion people per month in its blog on 01.10.2025, 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 % (investor call, 29.07.2026). A billion monthly users and not a single direct route from Russia.

Stores. In the US App Store, version 287 from 24.08.2026 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 05.09.2026).

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 (28.08.2025). There are no independent measurements of the assistant itself, and on 02.09.2026 Meta* compared the new Muse Spark 1.3 model only with its own version 1.2.

Demand in Russia. “Meta AI” gets 8.5 thousand searches per month, “download meta ai” 1.6 thousand, and “meta ai in russia” 330 (Wordstat, 05.09.2026). Meta AI's place among the assistants in our catalog is shown beneath the card title, and the full tool ranking is on the main 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 stores. Your conversations are the payment: since 16.12.2025, they have gone into the advertising profile; details are in section 6.

Paid plans. On 27.05.2026, Meta* launched Meta One subscriptions; at launch, the press listed $7.99 and $19.99 per month for the assistant. In Meta* help pages, consumer plans were called Core and Premium by September; the difference is in limits for Thinking mode and image and video generation. Meta* does not publish prices on its pages and says the plans are in limited testing and unavailable everywhere; at launch, this included Singapore, Guatemala, and Bolivia.

Paying from Russia. We do not recommend or seek workarounds: as early as March 2022, a lawyer T—Zh classified money transfers to Meta* as a risk under the article on financing extremist activity. No one has analyzed this article in relation to an individual subscription, but it is not worth testing on yourself.

For developers. Since 09.07.2026, the separate Meta Model API charges $1.25 per million input tokens and $0.15 for cached repeats. Output costs $4.25 on the OpenRouter storefront, which Meta* itself calls its sales channel. The free tier allows 60 requests per minute.

Three questions: where conversations go, what has already happened to them, and what is happening with the company in Russia.

Conversations feed ads. Since 16.12.2025, text and voice conversations with the assistant have gone into feed and ad personalization in Facebook*, Instagram*, WhatsApp, and Messenger. Meta* provides no separate “do not use conversations” toggle; only general ad settings and opting out of the assistant remain. Exceptions apply in the EU, the UK, and South Korea, while health, religion, and politics do not go into ad targeting.

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

Incognito Chat. Since 13.05.2026, WhatsApp and the app have had a temporary conversation that is not saved or used for training; according to Meta*, not even Meta* can read it. The conversation ends when you close the app or lock your phone.

Status in Russia. 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 threshold is 13, like Meta*'s other apps. The App Store lists 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 that people go to for an answer. Meta AI is present where people already message, in WhatsApp, Instagram*, and glasses, so it is opened separately less often. In Russia, both routes are closed directly, but ChatGPT has a route through a foreign card and intermediaries, while paying Meta* from Russia is legally risky.

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 for Russia: its chat opens from Russian IP addresses and registration works by 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.