In light of the success of multiple artificial intelligence tools, Mark Zuckerberg realigns his speech to reassure investors.
12.5 billion euros. That’s what Facebook swallowed in 2022 in its Reality Labs branch, which is responsible for the development of its augmented and virtual reality technologies and in particular its metaverse. A strategy that is not working for the time being: Despite the introduction of new virtual reality headsets and its Metaverse platform, Facebook has had to let its division’s sales drop for over a year. To reassure investors, Mark Zuckerberg is now talking primarily about artificial intelligence.
AI today, Metaverse…later
On Feb. 1, during talks with financial analysts, the Facebook CEO made statements that contrasted with his full confidence in his Metaverse a few months ago. After a 60 percent drop in Facebook stock price in 2022, the founder was urged to reassure investors, even if it meant surfing a new trend fueled by the success of tools like Dall-E or ChatGPT.
“The two waves of technology guiding our projects are artificial intelligence and, longer term, the metaverse,” warns Mark Zuckerberg.
A contextualization that regularly emerges in the face of many doubts about the feasibility of the Metaverse project, which the general public does not like. Last September, Facebook had thus conjured up the horizon of a decade for its metaverse to show its full potential.
In another sign of this shift in discourse, the notion of the metaverse, discussed a year ago at the start of discussions with the same analysts, comes after mention of Facebook’s work on artificial intelligence earlier this year. In 2022, the term “metaverse” was mentioned fifteen times, compared to just seven in 2023.
Compete with TikTok
According to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook wants to better compete with TikTok using artificial intelligence tools, thanks to a more specialized selection of videos to be broadcast on Instagram, but also targeted advertising across all its platforms.
“Artificial intelligence is the foundation of our display tool and our advertising efforts,” says Mark Zuckerberg, who says he’s very interested in “generative” artificial intelligence, be it textual (like ChatGPT) or visual (like Dall-E).
To better remind the order of his priorities in the face of doubting investors about the Metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg also closed his keynote with the list of work areas for his company for 2023: artificial intelligence, advertising, messaging, generative artificial intelligence, then Metaverse. A choice that was probably not made by accident.