A Second Meta App Has Hit The App Store
Meta AI and its implications for creators.
Hello and welcome to the 6 new subscribers since last week, where I reviewed Edits, the new Instagram video editing app. I got a lot of positive feedback about this style of article. Lucky for us, Meta just rolled out another app – Meta AI – so let’s run it back.
So I actually already had this app downloaded before the recent rebrand to Meta AI.
It used to be called MetaView, and it was basically just an app I checked whenever I had issues connecting my iPhone to my Meta Ray-Bans1.
Here’s how the app describes itself on the App Store:
Meet the new Meta AI app, your personal AI assistant that understands you. Get tailored answers, advice and inspiration as you go about your day.
Open the app and start talking. The Meta AI app (previously the Meta View app) is designed for natural back-and-forth conversations, so you can get what you need faster and more easily. Meta AI can learn your preferences and interests to give you more helpful answers, whether you’re on the go or getting work done.
It can also help you create, edit and restyle images.
Looking for inspiration? Get AI hacks and prompts from the community in the Discover feed, and remix your favorites to try them out yourself.
Good grief.
Is there anything more harrowing than an AI assistant that understands you?
Like every other app on your phone, there are five tabs at the bottom:
The only difference is that each tab is surmounted by the option to talk to Meta AI as a sort of Chat GPT / Siri virtual assistant figure.
HOME
The Home page functions as an easy way to talk to your Meta AI Assistant.
The voice options come in a variety of natural-sounding computer voices (Aspen, Indigo, Clover), and computer-sounding natural voices (John Cena, Awkwafina, Keegan-Michael Key):
Anyone with ChatGPT or Grok or Gemini or any of the other AI assistants out there has likely played around with their refreshing take on this modern classic. The only difference, really, is who gets to track and monitor all of that sweet, sweet data.
DISCOVER
This tab makes me want to pursue a career in toll booth operation.
It looks like an image-based For You Page, only it’s full of posts by accounts I do not follow. All of them are taking stabs at creating AI-generated images:
When I look at these images, I do not laugh. I do not smile.
I am filled with a deep sense of emptiness.
I also experience some sort of muted, hollow tugging, up from my stomach through my shoulder blades.
This thing did not happen, and was not made by anyone.
This is made abundantly clear by the Meta AI watermark in the lower, right-hand corner.
Why am I looking a picture that wasn’t made by someone I don’t know?
It’s almost like looking at a visual accompaniment to other people’s dreams, which I have ranked as the least interesting thing to hear about, right above their flight delays.
When pressed for answers, here is what my Meta AI assistant had to say:
HISTORY
This tab logs an archive of questions I’ve asked Meta AI via my Ray-Bans glasses. Pretty vanilla, but I guess it’s valuable information to have on me on their end:
I will contend that being able to talk to a computer without needing a screen or hands has been arguably life-changing for me since buying these glasses in December.
Walking freely around New York City with my phone in my pocket or bag means I can have navigational directions playing through my sunglasses, accurately guiding me to my destination without anyone around me knowing I’m a visually impaired person. I’m not holding my phone with XXL font two inches from my face at the street corner, or dangerously wearing noise-canceling AirPods as delivery bikers run red lights at busy intersections, or doing anything out of the ordinary other than wearing mildly douchey sunglasses when it isn’t that sunny out.
The glasses describe your surroundings with stunning detail, as they come equipped with subtle, high-resolution cameras that take beautiful pictures and videos. I mainly use them to read small-font menus at restaurants, or street signs when exiting a subway station. I even had it read the price of eggs at the grocery store, so I could see what all the fuss is about.
NOTIFICATIONS
Nothing to report on here. I presume here is where I’ll be notified if someone reposts my image of Darth Vader dunking over AOC on a trampoline, or whatever.2
DEVICES
This tab keeps track of all my Meta Ray-Bans (I own an indoor prescription pair, and two different tints for outdoors). Ideally, down the road they will create some “filter” button that functions as an overlay over the entire lens, so I only need one pair.
The Gallery section is where I edit and delete my POV pickup basketball highlights, and apparently take pictorial evidence of my strong position right before getting waxed by “Bigote” at the Union Square chess tables last week.
So yeah.
A pretty bizarre app, all things considered.
And it’s not exactly taking the App Store by storm. It’s currently ranked #8 in “Productivity” apps, whatever that’s worth.
I’m not really sure who all the Virtual Assistant and image creation elements are for, certainly not for anyone with an ounce of creative ability.
But this app, combined with Edits, suggests that Meta is once again bullish on the Metaverse. It’s a bit “Gretchen trying to make fetch happen”, but a part of me wonders if the concept of ~the Metaverse~ was secretly 10 years ahead of its time, and enough people are pitching tents on the campgrounds of Avoidance and Dissociation that this alternative way of socializing and existing (e.g., “Not”) seems increasingly preferable.
Personally, I am willing to be surveilled and fed hypertargeted advertisements in exchange for short-term independence. It’s why I’m pro Way-Mo, order my groceries from Amazon, and am generally an early adopter of any “Smart” technology device.
But that’s because I’m someone who optimistically views new technology as a means to level the playing field, not level the players.
That emptiness I felt scrolling through the Discover tab comes down to one thing.
When you see a weird, funny, or beautiful image a person made, it reflects a point of view, or some kind of human impulse to flock to the arts and make something.
But these AI images don’t have that.
They’re just visual output.
Technically impressive, but creatively vacant.
No soul.
And when enough of what we scroll through looks like that, it starts to mess with what we expect from art and creativity in general.
When I write a song, or an email, or feel the need to express myself through any creative outlet, it’s because I have to. Something compels me deep in my bones.
If we lose that “need”, and if we start mistaking pure output for actual expression, we risk ending up with a world full of beautiful things that don’t mean anything.
Those glasses have been genuinely life changing for me, but their awful positioning and marketing strategy is an email for another time.
I’d share the images this generated, but they were impossibly unremarkable.