You’ve probably used it in WhatsApp. You may even have tried it in Instagram (it’s in the Messages tab), Facebook Messenger, WeChat or Telegram. Either way, many of your favourite social media apps now have built-in AI bots that answer your questions and help you find what you’re looking for.
WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook Messenger all use Meta AI; TikTok uses Doubao; WeChat uses Yuanbao; SnapChat uses My AI; and Telegram uses an open platform. These bots are all super useful and generally don’t use much mobile data. But if your data budget is tight, you’ll want to optimise how you use them to get the most out of your megabytes. Here’s how.
How to optimise your data
You can’t use WhatsApp or Instagram AI bots without data or an Internet connection, because they need cloud-based AI services and real-time messaging platforms to function. Those processes happen on remote services, so you can’t have an Internet connection. But in messaging apps like WhatsApp, especially, your chats are saved, which means you can save data by simply checking or scrolling back through your chats to find your frequently asked questions.
And, as with all chats, you’ll save data by sticking to plain text and not uploading or downloading images or video files.
What to ask
When we say WhatsApp’s AI bot uses little data, we mean it. The service is designed to feel friendly, and messages use about as much data as a text chat.
You can ask almost anything: general knowledge (“Who won the 2023 Rugby World Cup?”), creativity (“Write a heartfelt birthday message for my gran”), maths (“What’s 15% of 2450?”), productivity (“Summarise this in 100 words”), and recommendations (“What’s the best route from the airport to Sandton?”). Anything you’d ask ChatGPT or CoPilot, you can ask your social media chatbot too.
The trick is not to get sucked into a long conversation. Let’s say you’re looking for a movie recommendation. You open WhatsApp, and there – at the top of your Chats page – is a taskbar that says, “Ask Meta AI or Search”. Following the pre-loaded prompt, you type: “I want a new film to watch.” The conversation goes back and forth from there, as the AI asks what kind of films you’ve been enjoying lately, then provides a list (most of which you’ve streamed already) before landing on some useful recommendations.
For a shorter conversation, ask a better question. Be specific about what you want. Try: “I want to watch a new action film on Netflix.” Or, if you’re planning a night out: “What’s a good restaurant in Amanzimtoti?”
It’s like having a friend who knows all the answers to all your questions… but who you can only reach via DM, and usually only when you have data. For more tips about saving data check out our Datawyze content hub.
