Meta’s AI characters are now live across its US apps, with support for Bing Search and better memory

Earlier this year, Meta introduced a set of AI characters, including those based on real-life celebs including the likes of Paris Hilton, Mr. Beast, Kendall Jenner, Tom Brady, Charli D’Amelio, Snoop Dog, and others, which users could chat with across Meta’s apps. Today, the company announced its 28 AI characters are fully rolled out across the U.S. for people to chat with across WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram. In addition, the company said more of its AI characters will support search powered by Bing and it will begin experimenting with “long-term memory” in several — meaning, the characters will learn and remember your conversation when it’s over.

While the advantage of the latter is a character that feels more like a real person, who would also remember what you spoke about before, it also gives Meta the ability to retain user data between sessions to help it improve its AI products over time.

Meta says the long-term memory feature will be live in Billie (based on Kendell Jenner), Carter (a dating coach), Scarlett (a “hype woman bestie”), Zach (based on Mr. Beast), Victor (based on Dwyane Wade), Sally (based on Sam Kerr), and Leo (a career coach).

The company explains that when users chat with this subset of AI characters, they’ll be able to pick up where they left off.

“Our goal is to bring the potential for deeper connections and extended conversational capabilities to your chats with AI,” the company’s blog post states. It also notes that users will be able to clear their chat history with the AIs at any time, while Meta’s use of the chat data will be guided by its Generative AI Privacy guidelines.

In addition to long-term memory, more of the characters will support the ability to tap into Bing Search. Two of its sports-related AIs, Bru (based on Tom Brady) and Perry (based on Chris Paul), have supported Bing Search since their debut. Now, that same feature will roll out to AI characters Luiz (based on Izzy Adesanya), Coco (based on Charlie D’Amelio), Lorena (based on Padma Lakshmi), Tamika (based on Naomi Osaka), Izzy (an aspiring singer-songwriter) and Jade (a “hip-hop obsessive”), as well.

To access the AIs across Meta’s app, users will first start a new message in the app and then select “Create an AI chat” across Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

The launch puts Meta in competition with other AI character apps, including the popular Character AI, founded by Google AI researchers who helped build LaMDA, which has been catching up to ChatGPT in the U.S. The startup raised a massive $150 million in Series A funding, valuing its business at $1 billion.