Last year, Meta announced a series of AI updates coming to Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. These new options included things like AI stickers, AI image editing, AI celebrity chatbots, and Meta AI assistant, which you can't turn off. During this time, the company also announced AI Studio, a platform for developers to build custom AI bots for Meta products. Now, Meta is expanding that access to you, inviting all users to create any AI bot they want.

Custom AI bots are not a unique concept: OpenAI offers GPTs, for example, which lets you build custom versions of ChatGPT. Meta is doing something similar with AI Studio: You tell the platform exactly what you're looking for in a chatbot, and it builds it for you, without any coding experience necessary. If you want a bot that offers advice on cooking specifically with an air fryer, you can make it. If you want a bot that specializes in gardening advice, you can ask AI Studio to generate it.

Meta is also pitching this as a tool for creators to make custom AI versions of themselves. For the company, their platform will allow creators to put enough of their knowledge and personality into a bot, so that it can answer questions from users in a realistic and accurate way. We'll have to see about that.

Meta says AI studio is built using Llama 3.1, the company's latest class of AI models, so it will be interesting to see how it performs compared to other custom AI products.

I'm still relatively unconvinced by most AI applications I've seen so far, and I'm not sure Meta's AI Studio is going to make me a believer. After all, AI is still rife with issues, including its tendency to just make things up. But if you're curious, you can either build a bot yourself, or try one of the ones made by other Meta users.

How to build a bot with Meta's AI Studio

To start, head to Meta's AI Studio website, and log into your Instagram account. Alternatively, you can go to Instagram directly, open DMs, start a new message, and choose AI chats to get started.

Whichever way you access AI Studio, you'll find a series of different bots you can chat with. These are made by other Meta users who decided to make their bots public. If you have a specific type of bot in mind, you can search for it, but otherwise, you can scroll through "popular" choices. Right now, I'm being offered "Skibuddy," a bot meant to help "flush away mental flogginess" (and a play on the Skibidy Toilet meme); "InfoBot," a source of "accurate and reliable information;" and "SportsFan Sam," a chatbot all about sports.

You can choose any of these and start chatting, or you can choose to create your own. On desktop, hit Create an AI, while on mobile, choose Create.

From here, you can choose from one of Meta's preset personalities ("Loyal bestie," "Attentive listener," "Private tutor," etc.) or you can create your own from Custom AI character. Give your character a description in 1,000 characters or less. Meta will generate a profile picture, name, and tagline for your bot based on this description, but you can edit these yourself. (For the picture, you can simply adjust the prompt to generate a new image.) When you're satisfied with your selection, you can choose who can see this bot: You can make it only for you, only for your close friends on Instagram, or available for the whole platform. If you choose the latter, your bot will show up in search, and may appear on the front page of AI Studio, with your account name attached. Be warned.

Once you hit Create, Instagram will process your bot, and it will appear as a new DM. You can start chatting now, but I'd recommend hitting the Settings gear in the top right. You'll see the same options as you did when creating your bot, plus some new options. Knowledge lets you give the bot specific instructions for how to respond to queries. You can give you bot a backstory and background information so it knows how to act in specific situations. Conversation lets you create a welcome message for new chats, and offer three icebreakers that will be presented to the user to prompt the bot with. I'm not sure why Meta doesn't give you these options when creating the bot, but they're useful tools for shaping how the bot performs.

Meta actually has an 18-page manual for using AI Studio, if you want a true deep dive on the platform.

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