During a meeting with employees at Meta’s Menlo Park headquarters, CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized the company’s investments in the field of artificial intelligence (AI). The event, which took place in the Hacker Square pavilion, was the first such gathering since before the Covid pandemic.
While Facebook has long touted its investments in AI, it has not been at the center of the conversation regarding the latest consumer applications, which have come from Microsoft-backed OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft itself. However, Zuckerberg made it clear that Meta was in the middle of the AI race, with recent qualitative breakthroughs in generative AI.
Generative AI uses written prompts to create conversational text and compelling visuals. Zuckerberg spoke about the company’s projects in this field, stating that he wanted to build the technology into every single one of the company’s products. According to a statement shared with CNBC, he said, “We’re going to play an important and unique role in the industry in bringing these capabilities to billions of people in new ways that other people aren’t going to do.”
The company’s work in incorporating generative AI models into the metaverse, the nascent virtual world that Meta is sinking billions of dollars into every quarter to try and make a reality, was also discussed. AI can help create the 3D visuals for the metaverse, and Meta executives detailed some of the company’s work in this area.
Meta is giving access to several internal generative AI tools to employees to help them develop prototypes, and the company is hosting a hackathon for workers to show off their AI projects. The company also plans to debut a service for Instagram users that will let them modify photos via text prompts and share them in the app’s Stories feature. Additionally, Meta plans for its Messenger and WhatsApp services to eventually include the ability for users to engage with more sophisticated AI-powered chatbots as a form of entertainment.
Meta executives told employees that the company is still committed to releasing AI research to the open-source community. However, they did not address a recent letter from Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) expressing concern over a public leak of the company’s LLaMA language model and the “potential for its misuse in spam, fraud, malware, privacy violations, harassment, and other wrongdoing and harms.”
Meta recently laid off employees, and Zuckerberg addressed these layoffs at the beginning of the gathering. However, he focused mostly on the company’s AI projects, stating that the recent breakthroughs in generative AI gave them the opportunity to push the technology forward and bring these capabilities to billions of people in new ways.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg emphasized the company’s investments in AI and its recent breakthroughs in generative AI during a meeting with employees at the company’s Menlo Park headquarters. He spoke about the company’s projects in the field and stated that they intended to build the technology into every single one of their products. The company is giving employees access to several internal generative AI tools to help them develop prototypes, and they plan to debut a service for Instagram users that will let them modify photos via text prompts and share them in the app’s Stories feature. Additionally, Meta plans for its Messenger and WhatsApp services to eventually include the ability for users to engage with more sophisticated AI-powered chatbots.
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