Meta Platforms’ AI investments are yielding significant results. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, on the Q2 earnings call, credited advanced AI-driven recommendation systems with boosting both engagement and revenues across Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp. Most notably, improvements in recommendation quality pushed time spent up by 5% on Facebook and 6% on Instagram just this quarter, Zuckerberg revealed during the investors' call.
This engagement surge comes despite some users grumbling about “AI slop”—the proliferation of low-quality, AI-generated content across social platforms. Zuckerberg countered that Meta’s AI systems are rapidly improving in connecting people with meaningful, interesting content that matches their tastes.
As of June, more than 3.4 billion people worldwide used at least one Meta “family of apps” daily, a 6% jump from last year. This unprecedented scale helped drive Meta’s total family of apps revenue to $47.1 billion in Q2, a robust 22% increase year-over-year.
A key factor was video: time spent watching video content on Meta’s platforms jumped 20% year-over-year, thanks to AI-powered ranking optimizstions and a strategic push to promote more original content on Instagram. Meta’s X rival, Threads, is also showing improved user stickiness, with more time spent as Meta integrates large language models (LLMs) to enhance user experience.
Zuckerberg's claims that AI has helped increase time spent on Meta apps comes hours after he posted a blog on how Meta is approaching "personal superintelligence". In the blog post, Zuckerberg said the company is now seeing early signs of its AI models improving themselves. Though the pace is currently slow, the trajectory is unmistakable — superintelligence is now within sight. But rather than using it to automate everything and place society on a universal AI-funded basic income (a path some in the industry advocate), Meta wants to take a more human-centred approach.
Discover the latest Business News, Sensex, and Nifty updates. Obtain Personal Finance insights, tax queries, and expert opinions on Moneycontrol or download the Moneycontrol App to stay updated!
