צוקרברג: ייקח ל-Meta שנים להרוויח כסף מ-AI גנרטיבי

The rush for AI gold is on – just don't expect it to turn a profit anytime soon.

The company is already quite profitable, having increased its net income to over $12 billion with revenues of $36.5 billion in the last quarter alone. However, its revenue growth is expected to slow down in the future. At the same time, it is spending more than ever on AI and meta-verse.

"Historically, the investment to build these new immersive experiences in our apps has been a very good long-term investment for us and for investors who have stayed with us," Zuckerberg said in the earnings call, likening it to the distribution of stories and plots. "And the early signs are quite positive here. But building the leading AI will be a bigger task than the other experiences we've added to our apps, and it's reasonable to assume that it will take a few years."

He said the Meta AI assistant has been "tested" by "tens of millions of people" since becoming widely available last week, although this is expected given the prominence it now holds in areas like Instagram's search box. The real test will be whether Meta AI becomes a product that people return to frequently and if many people want to use AI assistants in social media apps.

Looking ahead, Meta sees several ways to generate revenue from its assistant, which is currently free to use.

"There are several ways to build a serious business here, including changing the scale of business messages, displaying paid ads or content for AI-powered interactions, and allowing people to pay to use larger AI models and access more computing power," Zuckerberg said. "In addition, AI is already helping us improve engagement in the app, naturally leading to seeing more ads and direct ad enhancements to provide more value."

In the coming year, Zuckerberg suggested that the use of Meta AI could also improve the quality of its ads, implying that the company will analyze how people use its assistant to better understand what they are interested in buying. This approach sets Meta on a different path from OpenAI, which has so far resisted commercializing its model for subscribers and focused on organizational development.

"I used to think that AR glasses wouldn't really be mainstream products until we had full holographic displays," he said. "But now it seems pretty clear that there's also a significant market for stylish, display-less AI glasses."