Technology
Meta to Launch Generative AI for Creating Ads This Year: Report
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Facebook’s parent company Meta aims to commercialize its generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology to improve ad effectiveness. The move comes as the company, which has been researching AI since 2013, is trying to find practical applications for the tech and on the back of recent mass layoffs affecting 10,000 jobs to increase profitability and follower a leaner structure.
Meta Claims to be at the Forefront of AI Development
In a recent interview, Meta’s chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth claimed the company is a generative AI research and development leader. Meta began studying AI in 2013 and has reportedly published dozens of studies in the field, ranking alongside Google and other tech giants. He said:
“We’ve been investing in artificial intelligence for over a decade, and have one of the leading research institutes in the world. We certainly have a large research organization, hundreds of people.”
Bosworth claimed that Meta remains a leader in AI development. “We feel very confident that … we are at the very forefront,” he said, adding that teams in the company pioneered some of the techniques related to large language model (LLM) development.
“[I] expect we’ll start seeing some of them [commercialization of the tech] this year. We just created a new team, the generative AI team, a couple of months ago; they are very busy. It’s probably the area that I’m spending the most time [in] as well, as well as Mark Zuckerberg and [Chief Product Officer] Chris Cox.”
The CTO noted that Meta also plans to commercialize its AI technology soon. Specifically, the company will use the tech to improve ad effectiveness by telling advertisers what tools to create better ads for different audiences. “It can save a lot of time and money,” he said.
This comes as advertising is the primary source of Meta’s revenue. In 2022, the company generated over $113 billion in ad revenues, compared to its cumulative revenue of $116 billion. Bosworth noted that Meta would gradually incorporate AI into its products and services, including Facebook and Instagram.
Meanwhile, Meta, which has been on a mission to restore profitability, has launched several waves of layoffs to trim costs. The tech giant announced plans to lay thousands of employees in November last year and kicked off another round of layoffs last month.
Meta Pivots Away from Metaverse After Losing Billions
Last year, Meta lost billions of dollars on its metaverse division, Reality Labs. According to Meta’s forecasts, the company’s bet on the virtual world cost it $9.4 billion in 2022, and the figure could increase to a whopping $100 billion in 2023.
Furthermore, Meta’s flagship metaverse platform Horizon Worlds, has fallen short of expectations, forcing the company to lower its target. Reportedly, the Metaverse platform is plagued with bugs and problems, and there have also been user complaints about the quality of the virtual world.
This has forced Meta, which made headlines with its high-level metaverse entrance back in 2021, to pivot away from its metaverse ambitions. The company now has a “new top-level product group at Meta focused on generative AI to turbocharge our work in this area,” as CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote in a February 27 Facebook post. He added:
“In the short term, we’ll focus on building creative and expressive tools. Over the longer term, we’ll focus on developing AI personas that can help people in a variety of ways.”
Notably, user interest in metaverse platforms has also dropped sharply over the past few months. For instance, metaverse platform Decentraland, with a market cap of over $1 billion, registered only $232,000 worth of LAND sales in March, compared to its all-time high of $7.7 million in January 2022, according to a Dune Analytics dashboard.
This article originally appeared on The Tokenist
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