Meta Launches Hebrew AI Personal Assistant in Israel via WhatsApp and Meta AI App

Meta has expanded its AI personal assistant, Meta AI, to Israel, making it available in Hebrew for the first time. The assistant can be accessed through a dedicated Meta AI app, WhatsApp, and the Meta.ai website. This launch is part of Meta's competition with Google and Microsoft in the AI space. Meta AI is powered by the Muse Spark model, Meta's first reasoning and multi-modal AI designed to balance fast responses with complex problem-solving abilities in areas like science and math.

Unlike other AI tools that rely solely on internet links, Muse Spark integrates with Meta's ecosystem, drawing on content, recommendations, and trends from Instagram, Facebook, and Threads. Users can sign in with their Facebook or Instagram accounts to create a new Meta AI profile and link other apps such as Google accounts for calendar and email integration.

The assistant offers a wide range of capabilities, including answering questions, providing recommendations, assisting with tasks, generating images and videos from text, editing photos, and interpreting images sent by users. For example, it can suggest recipes based on a photo of a refrigerator's contents or review code for errors. Meta highlights Israel's advantage due to WhatsApp's widespread use, with about 98% of Israelis using the app, facilitating faster adoption compared to competitors that require separate apps for AI interaction.

Meta describes this launch as a significant step toward developing a personal superintelligence and leveraging its vast social media ecosystem to provide AI responses grounded in real user content and trends rather than just web searches. This move also aligns with WhatsApp's recent introduction of usernames, further integrating social networking features.