Meta considering premium tier, ads for AI assistant, says Mark Zuckerberg

Meta recently launched a standalone mobile app for Meta AI that now has nearly one billion monthly active users.

Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said on April 30 that Meta AI could show product recommendations and ads as well as offer a paid tier for advanced functionality, outlining plans to monetise the tech giant's artificial intelligence (AI) assistant.

Earlier this week, Meta launched a standalone mobile app for Meta AI that now has nearly one billion monthly active users. The assistant was previously available only through the company's apps such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger, along with a web app. India is the biggest market for Meta AI in terms of usage.

The mobile app, available on iOS and Android, comes with a new Discover feed that lets people share their AI prompts and explore how others are using the AI assistant. It also features a voice mode that makes the assistant more conversational, similar to ChatGPT's Advanced Voice Mode or Google Gemini's Gemini Live.

"I think that there will be a large opportunity to show product recommendations or ads as well as a premium service for people who want to unlock more compute for additional functionality or intelligence," Zuckerberg said during the company's earnings call. However, he didn't share a timeline or further details on when the firm may roll out these features.

Zuckerberg said the social networking giant will be "largely focused on scaling and deepening engagement for at least the next year before we'll really be ready to start building out the business".

Rivals such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude, Microsoft’s Copilot and xAI’s Grok offer premium subscriptions that provide users access to more advanced features and compute.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai has also previously expressed the company's intention to introduce native ads in Gemini.

Meta AI opportunity

Zuckerberg said Meta AI is one of the major opportunities the company is pursuing as part of its AI push amid increased competition, along with other opportunities such as AI devices, business messaging, delivering engaging experiences, and improved advertising.

"Our focus for this year is...making Meta AI the leading personal AI with an emphasis on personalisation, voice conversations, and entertainment," he said.

Zuckerberg said everyone would have an AI they talk to throughout the day, whether while browsing content on their phones or, eventually, as they go about their day with smart glasses. "I think that this is going to be one of the most important and valuable services that has ever been created," he said.

In the near future, users will have content in their feeds that they can interact with, and it will respond rather than just being something that is passively watch, Zuckerberg said.

"As AI unlocks more productivity in the economy, I expect that people will spend more of their time on entertainment and culture which will create an even larger opportunity to create more engaging experiences across all apps," he said.

Meta is also expanding its hardware ambitions with plans to make its Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses available in several new markets like India, United Arab Emirates, and Mexico.

The smart glasses let people chat with Meta AI, take photos, record video, listen to music, and make hands-free phone and video calls among others.

In September, the social networking giant also unveiled the first functional prototype of its much-anticipated augmented reality (AR) glasses Orion.

"Glasses are the ideal form factor for both AI and the Metaverse... More than a billion people worldwide wear glasses today and it seems highly likely that these will become AI glasses over the next 5 to 10 years," Zuckerberg said.

He said Ray-Ban Meta AI Glasses sales have tripled in the past year and hinted at new device launches with its partner, EssilorLuxottica, later this year, which could expand the category and introduce new technological capabilities to the glasses

Building these devices would help the company deliver the "highest quality AI and social experiences", Zuckerberg said, which will amplify its current opportunities and unlock new ones.

Reality Labs, the unit which develops the virtual reality and augmented reality hardware and software, posted a $4.2 billion loss in Q1 2025 while generating $412 million in sales.

The loss widened from $3.85 billion and revenue fell from $440 million in the same quarter of the previous year.

The unit has accumulated a loss of over $60 billion since late 2020, when the firm started reporting Reality Labs revenue as a separate segment.

Meta reported revenue of $42.31 billion for the quarter, a 16 percent increase from the year-ago period. Its net income grew 35 percent to $16.6 billion.

The firm said the number of daily active users across its family of apps averaged 3.43 billion for March, up 6 percent.

Meta also raised its full-year capital expenditure forecast for 2025 to between $64 billion and $72 billion, up from the previous range of $60 billion to $65 billion, to boost its AI efforts.

The higher capex is due to "additional data center investments to support our artificial intelligence efforts as well as an increase in the expected cost of infrastructure hardware" , the company said.