When Meta embedded AI bots in its apps, even students in the most remote corners of Colombia gained access. But rather than boosting learning, it’s getting in the way.

When Meta embedded AI bots in its apps, even students in the most remote corners of Colombia gained access. But rather than boosting learning, it’s getting in the way.

Starting in July 2024, AI was suddenly everywhere all at once in Latin America after Meta Platforms started incorporating chatbots in its apps across the region. Whether users wanted them or not, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram became homes for a variety of AI bots.

The students of José Gregorio Salas Rural High School put them to work on their homework. This small community of farming and cattle-ranching families was no longer shielded from the AI revolution, which was disrupting education worldwide. It could no longer escape because the new bots were embedded in the apps everyone was already using. Meta had fine-tuned the apps for the emerging-market consumer, making them cheaper to use and designing them to work with less sophisticated phones and patchy connectivity.

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