Meta plans to launch generative tools as soon as this year, following some heavy investment in AI systems and a decade of academic research, with an eye on advertising production.
Why it matters
Generative AI has since last autumn been a story belonging to an upstart in OpenAI.
Now Meta, one of the biggest contributors to the field in recent year,s finally enters the commercial AI space, but with its sights apparently set on marketing, following heavy investment in the infrastructure to power it.
The story
Andrew ‘Boz’ Bosworth, CTO at Meta told Nikkei Asia: “[I] expect we’ll start seeing some of them [commercialization of the tech] this year.”
It follows several moves into generative AI by the company, from its Make-a-video system, or the establishment of a top-level product group, point to the critical nature of getting into producing generative apps for people and companies to use.
“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 Mark Zuckerberg and [Chief Product Officer] Chris Cox.”
Like Google, Meta has been a Silicon Valley leader in the AI space, contributing large amounts of academic research to the field since it started working on AI in 2013.
Vague effectiveness plans
Boz noted the company’s belief that Meta’s AI can improve campaign effectiveness in a way that could optimise the message at scale for different audiences. Advertisers can “ask the AI, ‘Make images for my company that work for different audiences.’ And it can save a lot of time and money.”
The ethics of AI
Boz was sceptical of pausing the development of AI for six months, as suggested in a recent petition from the Future of Life Institute, arguing that it’s difficult to stop progress and make long-range decisions about the changes you plan to make.
“Very often you have to understand how technology evolves before you can know how to protect and make it safe. And so I think, not only is it unrealistic, I don’t think it would be effective.”
