WhatsApp might be one of the natural homes of Meta AI, but that doesn’t mean you have to use the app to talk to Meta’s AI chatbots. Meta practically forces Meta AI on Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp users. Whether they want to use Meta AI or not, Meta has made big changes to these apps, so the Meta AI button/menu gets prominent placement. You might even activate Meta AI by mistake if you’re not careful. Also, nobody would blame you for tapping the Meta AI button at least once if you didn’t know what it’s about.
But you have options if Meta AI isn’t your default choice for chatting with AI. You can even chat with competing AI models in Meta’s WhatsApp, the world’s most popular instant messaging app. The best part about it is that Meta can’t stop you. WhatsApp chats use phone numbers to work. All an AI company needs to do is assign a phone number to its chatbot and make that AI work with WhatsApp.
OpenAI did it first, bringing ChatGPT to WhatsApp a few months ago. OpenAI upgraded the feature. It’s unsurprising to see others do the same thing, especially Perplexity AI, which is clearly looking to expand its footprint.
The AI search engine is now available in WhatsApp and is incredibly easy to use. Add Perplexity AI’s phone number to your contacts, and you’ll have Perplexity AI ready to chat with you on WhatsApp. Is it a good idea to go to Perplexity instead of ChatGPT? Now, that’s another matter.
How to use Perplexity AI on WhatsApp
Perplexity AI CEO Aravind Srinivas announced the feature on X, listing the AI’s abilities inside WhatsApp and teasing that more features will be coming:
You can use Perplexity directly from WhatsApp now. Answers, sources, image generation. A lot more features coming soon there!
Srinivas also shared the Perplexity AI phone number you must save to chat with Perplexity AI in WhatsApp: +1 (833) 436-3285.
It doesn’t matter where you are in the world; you can save the phone number, start a WhatsApp chat, and Perplexity AI will answer your questions.
Since this is an end-to-end encrypted chat app, the contents of your chat will be protected. However, what happens with the data that ends up on the other side of the chat is unclear.
But should you use Perplexity at all?
That’s a big reason not to use Perplexity AI in WhatsApp, considering what the CEO said a few days ago. Aravind Srinivas said the company’s upcoming browser is supposed to track everything about users so Perplexity can then serve relevant ads to the user. That’s incredibly disturbing.
Perplexity wants to use AI and do exactly what Google and Facebook are doing. It’s one thing for a personal AI chatbot to collect data about the user so it can work as a personal assistant and something else to harness all that data for ad purposes. It’s even scarier than what Facebook and Google did in the pre-genAI era. The AI can help Perplexity create even better user profiles for ad purposes. The company might also want to use that data to train its AI models.
That brings me to another reason to avoid Perplexity AI right now, whether it’s WhatsApp or the web. The company doesn’t rely on its own home-grown AI models to answer queries. Instead, Perplexity uses models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and X. You’d be better off using ChatGPT, Claude, Meta AI, and Grok instead of Perplexity AI.
Then again, if you like Perplexity, you might want to use the dedicated mobile or web app to access its AI instead of WhatsApp. You’ll get a better experience. The same argument is valid for ChatGPT. Rather than ChatGPT, you’d be better served by the iPhone, Android, and web apps.
Why WhatsApp makes sense for AI
However, there are unique advantages to bringing AIs like ChatGPT and Perplexity to WhatsApp. First, companies like OpenAI and Perplexity might get more users, especially in markets where internet users are likelier to spend time in social apps than mobile or web apps.
Secondly, WhatsApp traffic might not count towards someone’s monthly internet traffic in some emerging markets. That would give users access to AI products like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Meta AI, without requiring third-party apps that would eat into their monthly data allowances.
There’s also the matter of convenience for everyone using WhatsApp. Why switch to an AI app if you can chat with an AI chatbot inside WhatsApp? That’s actually Meta’s pitch for forcing Meta AI access on WhatsApp users.
With all that in mind, you can choose whether to bring AIs into your WhatsApp chat and what models to use. If I were you, I’d stick to ChatGPT, but then again, I use ChatGPT primarily on the web.