New AI tools showcased at Meta meeting
4 Min Read
Employees are given a preview of ChatGPT-like chatbots for WhatsApp and Messenger.
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Mark Zuckerberg, seen here in 2019, addressed the company at an all-hands meeting. (AP)
In an internal business meeting on Thursday, Facebook's owner, Meta, introduced new AI-focused tools and laid out its strategy following months of financial difficulty.
The firm acknowledged a New York Times article that said staff members had access to early versions of new products being developed by the company, including ChatGPT-like chatbots intended for Messenger and WhatsApp that could talk in several identities.
The Menlo Park-based company's chief technical officer, Andrew Bosworth, chief product officer, Chris Cox, and founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, all provided remarks at the all-hands meeting, which was broadcast to its international offices.
According to a transcript of the session given to Reuters by a company representative, Meta also disclosed a new Instagram feature that could edit user photographs via text prompts and another that could produce emoji stickers for messaging services.
Meta and its identity crisis
The developments follow a challenging few years for Meta, which recently let go of tens of thousands of employees and had $80 billion instantly wiped off its worth in 2022 following a weak earnings report.
After switching from Facebook to Meta and putting all of its resources behind an ambitious plan to shift its primary business from social networking to the metaverse, its virtual reality project, the firm has grappled with an identity crisis.
While competitors like Google, Microsoft, and Snapchat have attracted a rush of investor attention after announcing the debuts of generative AI products, Meta has continued to struggle and invests more than $10 billion a year in developing the metaverse, forcing the firm to play catch-up.
Although Meta said last month it was working with a limited number of advertisers to test tools that utilize AI to produce visual backdrops and several versions of written text for its ad campaigns, it has yet to release any consumer-facing generative AI solutions.
After establishing early last year that it needed the hardware and software capacity to serve its AI product demands, the corporation has been restructuring its AI divisions and investing extensively to whip its infrastructure into shape.
In his remarks to the group on Thursday, Zuckerberg said the business could now include generative AI "into every single one of our products" due to recent advances in the field.
Executives at the conference also unveiled Metamate, a productivity assistant for staff members, who would be able to respond to questions and carry out tasks using data from internal corporate systems in addition to the consumer-facing products.
In response to criticism of Meta's open-source approach to AI, Zuckerberg reportedly said that "democratizing access to this has a bunch of value" at the meeting on Thursday as reported by The New York Times. According to reports, he expressed the expectation that people might one day be able to create AI systems independently, outside of the framework provided by a small number of powerful technological firms.
Despite the business's renewed focus on AI, Zuckerberg told the New York Times that the corporation would not be giving up on its goals for the metaverse, reiterating earlier claims that the technology could be used to broaden the virtual universe.
On the Internet company's most recent quarterly results call, Zuckerberg stated, “We’ve been focusing on both AI and the metaverse for years now, and we will continue to focus on both.”
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