What is Meta AI, and can it recommend businesses to customers?
Meta AI is the assistant Meta builds into WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger, and also offers on a website and in its own app. Meta announced it in September 2023. Its later posts suggest asking it for recommendations, including for a restaurant, and say it can search the web. In Pew Research Center’s February 2026 survey, 14% of U.S. adults said they ever use it.
What Meta says Meta AI is
Meta announced Meta AI in a post dated September 27, 2023, calling it “a new assistant you can interact with like a person”, available in beta in the US on WhatsApp, Messenger and Instagram. In April 2024 Meta said people could use it on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, and launched a website for it. In April 2025 Meta launched a separate Meta AI app and said people use Meta AI daily across WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger.
Meta’s most recent post cited here is from April 2025, so features and availability may have changed since.
Can it recommend businesses?
Meta’s own examples point that way. Its April 2024 announcement suggests asking Meta AI to “recommend a restaurant with sunset views and vegan options”, and says Meta AI is available in search across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, with access to real-time information from across the web. Its April 2025 announcement says that, with the ability to search across the web, Meta AI “can help you get recommendations”.
Those are examples of what a customer can ask, not a promise about which businesses Meta AI will name. No one can promise that Meta AI will recommend a particular business.
Do customers use it?
In Pew Research Center’s survey of 5,119 U.S. adults, conducted February 17 to 23, 2026, 14% said they ever use Meta AI. In Pew’s chart it ranks fourth among seven chatbots, behind ChatGPT at 44%, Gemini at 24% and Copilot at 17%, and ahead of Grok at 8%, Claude at 6% and Character.ai at 3%. The figure counts anyone who ever uses it, for any reason, not only people looking for a business.
Customers can already message many businesses in these same apps, so a question to Meta AI may start where they would write to you.
What it means for a business
Add Meta AI to the monthly check in the related answer on checking what assistants say about your business. If someone writes to you on Facebook or Instagram, the related answer on keeping track of leads from social media messages shows how to record where they came from.
Sources
- Meta, “Introducing New AI Experiences Across Our Family of Apps and Devices” (September 27, 2023)
- Meta, “Meet Your New Assistant: Meta AI, Built With Llama 3” (April 18, 2024)
- Meta, “Introducing the Meta AI App: A New Way to Access Your AI Assistant” (April 29, 2025)
- Pew Research Center, “Americans and AI 2026: Chatbots, Smart Devices and Views on Impact” (June 17, 2026)
Related answers
- How do you check what ChatGPT says about your business?
- How many people use AI assistants like ChatGPT?
- How do you keep track of leads that come in through Facebook, Instagram and other messages?
GEO: recommended in AI answers
When a customer asks ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google's AI who to call, the answer names a few businesses. GEO is the work of making yours one of them.