Mark Zuckerberg is now convinced that Meta is a leading AI company, and he even knows how this technology will become a significant source of profit in the coming years.
With the recent release of Llama 3, Meta’s latest AI model, Zuckerberg said he has become “more ambitious and optimistic about AI” and his company’s ability to deliver technological results.
He made clear during a conference call with analysts Wednesday that he intends to “invest significantly more over the coming years to build even more advanced models and larger-scale AI services.” in the world”.
“With the latest models, we are not only building good AI models that can create new good social and business products,” the CEO told analysts. “I actually think we’re in a place where we’ve shown that we can build cutting-edge models and be the first AI company in the world. And that opens up a lot of additional opportunities beyond those that are more obvious to us.” We.”
Still heavy expenses
Such ambition is expensive. Meta increased its capital spending forecast for this year, saying it now plans to spend between $35 billion and $40 billion, largely on investments in AI. Its stock fell 16% after hours.
The last time Zuckerberg got excited about a new technology (the metaverse), Meta spent huge and scared off investors. The stock crashed and only recovered when the company embarked on a “year of efficiency” marked by massive layoffs and a more business-minded CEO.
Zuckerberg made a concerted effort Wednesday to head off Wall Street’s panic that his newfound enthusiasm for AI lacks business acumen.
He sees “multiple ways” for generative AI to make money and outlined three specific paths for it to become “a massive business” for Meta. Even if achieving this is a “long-term” perspective, he warned.
“Professional messaging”
One way AI can make money is by creating “business messaging,” in which companies pay Meta for generative AI tools, such as services that support automated interactions with customers. users and customers. Zuckerberg envisions Meta’s AI going beyond a simple chatbot and becoming an AI “agent” that handles more complex tasks and handles multiple queries to resolve user problems, instead of instantly returning with responses by heart.
Revenue from AI-based business messaging is “one of the near-term opportunities,” Zuckerberg said. While it may not become a reality this year, he stressed that it will be in less than five years. The immediate goal on that front is “to get hundreds of millions or billions of people using meta-AI as a core part of their businesses,” he explained.
Ads broadcast in “AI Interactions”
Another way generative AI makes money for Meta is to “introduce ads or paid content into AI interactions,” Zuckerberg said. Although brands and businesses paying to have their products appear in generative AI results is not yet the norm for AI chatbots, Meta’s entire business is effectively based on selling digital advertising . Inserting ads into its social and messaging products is at the heart of Meta as a company.
AI is already being more widely deployed by Meta in its new “unconnected content” algorithm for social content recommendations, which Zuckerberg says leads to more engagement in apps. This in turn leads more people to see more ads. Currently, 30% of content seen by Facebook users is recommended by AI, and the same goes for 50% of content seen by Instagram users, he said.
Sell access to AI models
A third distinct way Meta makes money from AI is by selling access to models as they grow. “Allowing people to pay to use larger AI models and access to more compute,” as Zuckerberg said on Wednesday.
Currently, Llama 3 and Meta’s other large language models are available for free to users and businesses below a certain size threshold. Access billing could here move away from Meta’s “open source” approach.
“So if technology and products evolve as we hope, each of them will generate enormous amounts of value for people and businesses over time,” Zuckerberg said. “I think it makes sense to go for it, and we’re going to do it.”
businessinsider
