Meta's Forum App Bundles Facebook Groups With an AI Search Tool
Meta has launched Forum, an iPhone app that pulls Facebook Groups into a dedicated space and adds an AI chatbot to search through group discussions. The app resurrects the functionality of Meta's Groups app, which the company discontinued in 2017.
Forum automatically imports groups a user belongs to on Facebook and displays posts in a feed format similar to Reddit. The app also suggests new groups based on user interests, though unlike Reddit, discussions remain tied to real identities.
How the AI chatbot works
The chatbot lives under an "Ask" tab and generates responses by pulling from posts across a user's groups. The approach mirrors how Google's AI overviews source Reddit content and other internet material to answer questions.
In testing, the chatbot answered questions about Magic: The Gathering by referencing posts from relevant groups and suggesting local communities. The responses were factually sound.
What Forum offers beyond chat
Users can view a profile section showing only their group posts, browse new groups to join, and post directly to specific communities. The feed surface makes groups more discoverable-many users had forgotten about groups they belonged to on Facebook's main app.
For writers and content professionals, Forum presents a new distribution channel where group discussions become searchable through AI. It also creates another source of training data for Meta's models, similar to how Google licenses Reddit content.
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