Meta has officially expanded its AI-enabled chatbot, Meta AI, to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), making it accessible in countries like Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, among others.
admin-2:14 PM UTC-February 24, 2025
Meta has formally expanded Meta AI to the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), opening the AI-enabled chatbot to millions more people.
Back in October, Meta announced it was launching Meta AI in six additional markets, including Brazil and the U.K. At the same time, the company teased gradual rollout plans for additional markets around the world, including MENA.
Moving forward, Meta AI will be available in Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Libya, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Yemen. In tandem, Meta is also expanding language support to include Arabic.
Users can summon a virtual assistant by tagging @meta in a chat on apps like Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger — although availability varies by region — to recommend places to visit nearby, or songs to include in a playlist for a roadtrip. Meta says it plans to go multimodal in terms of the available AI features in the MENA region, and will include tools such as “Imagine Me,” which creates stylistic selfies of users, and audio dubbing for Instagram Reels.
Consumer demand for alternatives to Big Tech’s social apps is heating up. Alternative social networks like Bluesky and Mastodon are gaining traction with people looking to leave X, while others are building ban-proof TikTok alternatives on open protocols. Similarly, many independent developers are also working on open, decentralized alternatives to Instagram, Meta’s flagship photo-sharing app with over 2 billion monthly active users. While none of the newcomers is anywhere near ready to rival Meta’s size and scope, their ability to even carve out a small niche within
With this announcement, Meta says that Meta AI is now available in 42 countries across 13 languages, with some 700 million users already across its various apps including WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger,and Facebook itself.
However, the exact feature set that’s available in each market does vary — for instance, Meta AI is limited in some European countries to general questions only on its Ray-Ban Meta AR glasses, due to data privacy regulations.