Meta’s top executives including CEO Mark Zuckerberg, chief product officer Chris Cox and chief technology officer Andrew Bosworth are spending most of their time working on artificial intelligence, according to an interview Bosworth gave to Nikkei Asia Wednesday.
While Bosworth said some of that work will benefit the metaverse — the digital world the company has said it’s working to build — it shows how important AI is to Meta as other large tech companies like Microsoft and Alphabet also invest in the space.
Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, announced a product group in February that is focused on generative AI— a new set of machine learning techniques that allow computers to generate text, draw pictures, and create other media that resemble human output. Meta has its own large language model called LLaMa that it said in February it would release to researchers. LLaMa, like competing AI models, is capable of answering questions and summarizing documents.
Large language models power applications like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft Bing AI, and Google‘s Bard.
Meta’s Reality Labs division, which is overseen by Bosworth and is home to the company’s metaverse technologies and projects, posted a $13.72 billion loss in 2022. But digital advertising makes up the bulk of Meta’s revenue. The company reported $116.61 billion in revenue in 2022.
Bosworth told Nikkei that he expects the company will debut some commercial applications using AI this year, and it could help the company’s profit-driving ad business.
For instance, he said companies can use AI to create ads by generating several images that work for different audiences instead of relying on a single-image advertising campaign.
Still, Bosworth told Nikkei that Meta could also use AI in the metaverse.
“In the future, you might be able to just describe the world you want to create and have the large language model generate that world for you,” Bosworth said in the report. “And so it makes things like content creation much more accessible to more people.”
The company hopes to eventually apply its AI technology to all of its services and products, including both Facebook and Instagram, according to the report.
Meta did not immediately respond to requests for comment.