Meta apps reach 3.4 billion daily users as Mark Zuckerberg says AI increased time spent on Facebook, Instagram

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.