Platforms
Meta AI: What Businesses Should Know About the AI Assistant in WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook
1The short answer
Meta AI is Meta's AI assistant, built directly into WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger. In Germany it has been available since March 2025. Meta AI can draw on information from the internet; for this, Meta operates its own crawlers, which website owners can control in their robots.txt. For businesses, the same fundamentals apply as with other AI assistants: accessible pages, clear answers and an unambiguous brand entity.
What is Meta AI?
Meta AI is a chat assistant that users open via a round blue icon in WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook and Messenger. In WhatsApp it can also be addressed in group chats with “@Meta AI”. When it launched in Europe in March 2025, Meta AI was available as a text-only assistant; features such as image and voice recognition that exist in the US were initially missing.
The difference from ChatGPT or Perplexity: users don't need to open a separate app. Meta AI is available where many people already communicate every day. As a result, questions about recommendations, providers or products now also end up in messaging apps.
Which Meta crawlers matter
Meta documents several crawlers with different purposes. Each can be controlled separately in robots.txt:
| Crawler | Purpose according to Meta |
|---|---|
| Meta-WebIndexer | Improves the quality and relevance of search results in Meta AI |
| Meta-ExternalFetcher | Fetches individual links when users request it |
| Meta-ExternalAgent | Training AI models and indexing content for products |
| facebookexternalhit | Generates link previews when content is shared in Meta apps |
If you want Meta AI to take your current information into account, don't block Meta-WebIndexer and Meta-ExternalFetcher. Whether you additionally allow your content to be used for training via Meta-ExternalAgent is, as with GPTBot, a strategic decision that we discuss with clients in the GEO Audit.
What businesses can do
- Check robots.txt, firewall and CDN rules so that the Meta crawlers can reach your pages.
- Content that answers specific questions in the first sentence – see Answer Engine Optimization.
- A clear, consistent description of your brand across website, profiles and directories – see Entity Optimization.
- Well-maintained company presences on Facebook and Instagram with the same details as on your website.
- Regular measurement using a fixed prompt catalogue that includes Meta AI – see AI Visibility.
What can't be said (yet)
Meta does not disclose in detail how Meta AI selects and weights sources for an answer. So far there is no reliable evidence on whether, for example, an active Instagram presence directly influences mentions in Meta AI. We therefore treat Meta AI like any other platform: measure what actually appears in the answers and derive actions from that. Nobody can guarantee a mention.
Sources
Author
Jan Hugo · Managing Director, Search, Tracking & AI
Technical foundations, data models, tracking architecture and AI-assisted analysis.
