SAN FRANCISCO, July 12 — Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant, powered by the company’s Llama large language model, crossed half a billion monthly active users by December 2024, according to company disclosures. The milestone came roughly eight months after the assistant launched across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger in April of that year. The rollout positioned Meta directly against OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Microsoft’s Copilot.
Unlike those competitors, Meta has not charged users for the assistant. Instead, the company has integrated the AI into its existing social platforms to drive engagement and gather data for its advertising business.
The record shows that Meta’s ad revenue for the fourth quarter of 2024 reached $46.7 billion, a 21 percent year-over-year increase that the company partly attributed to AI-driven ad tools.
Features and reach
The assistant can generate text, answer questions, create images through a feature called “Imagine,” and offer recommendations. Users access it through a dedicated icon within the apps or via direct messaging. By early 2025, the assistant was available in 22 countries and 12 languages.
In January 2025, Meta added a “Memory” feature that enables the assistant to recall past conversations. The company also integrated the assistant with Microsoft Bing, giving it real-time web search capabilities.
Timeline of deployment
On the timeline, Meta moved quickly from launch to widespread adoption. April 2024 marked the initial release across the company’s four major messaging and social platforms. By December, the 500-million-user figure represented a rapid uptake, though Meta has not broken out how many of those users are active on each individual app.
The Memory feature, added in January 2025, represented a shift toward persistent personalization. Sources familiar with the product’s development have noted that such features raise questions about data retention and user privacy, though Meta has not disclosed the specific data practices tied to the memory function.
Competitive landscape
Meta’s entry into the consumer AI space came as the broader market was already crowded. OpenAI’s ChatGPT had launched in late 2022 and sparked a wave of investment and product development. Google followed with Gemini, and Microsoft integrated its Copilot assistant across its Office and Windows products.
Meta’s advantage, according to analysts, lies in its existing user base of billions across its social platforms. The assistant does not require a separate download or account — it is embedded in apps users already open daily.
That distribution network, combined with the company’s advertising infrastructure, gives Meta a distinct path to monetization without a subscription fee.
What to watch
With 500 million monthly active users and growing, the question ahead of Meta is how the assistant evolves. The company has not announced whether it will introduce a paid tier, expand the Memory feature, or launch the assistant in additional countries. The integration with Bing suggests Meta is willing to partner for search capabilities rather than build its own web index.
As of mid-2026, the assistant remains free, ad-supported, and deeply woven into the fabric of Meta’s social ecosystem.
