India becomes the largest market for Meta AI usage, says senior executive

Company testing how businesses can use AI service to interact with customers

India has emerged as the largest market for Meta AI, said a senior executive of the social media company about the artificial intelligence chatbot.

Susan Li, chief financial officer at Meta, did not provide details during the company’s second quarter CY24 results call. “People have used Meta Al for billions of queries since we first introduced it. We're seeing particularly promising signs on WhatsApp in terms of retention and engagement, which has coincided with India becoming our largest market for Meta Al usage,” she said.

That India is the largest market for Meta AI is important as the chatbot was launched in the country in June 2024. Meta is the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, the instant messaging service.

Meta AI is available in more than 20 countries and eight languages. WhatsApp has some 500 million users in India, one of the largest markets for the service.

Li said the company expects Meta AI will help businesses communicate with customers more efficiently through messaging. “We’re starting by testing the ability for businesses to use AI in their chats with customers to help sell their goods and services and to generate leads.” Meta is expanding the number of advertisers it is testing for the chatbot.

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta, said that business AI will play a key role. “We’re still in alpha testing with more and more businesses. Over time, I think that just like every business has a website, a social media presence, and an email address, in future I think that every business will also have an AI agent that their customers can interact with,” he said.