Meta wants to use generative AI to create ads

Major tech organizations are racing to ship generative AI tools. And yet, a few companies have remained silent, including Apple and Meta. Today, the organization led by Mark Zuckerberg said that it aims to use generative AI in creating ads for different companies by the end of the year.

In an interview with Nikkei Asia, Meta’s CTO Andrew Bosworth, said the company expects to ship tools to create ads with AI that help a company make different images for different audiences.

“[I] expect we’ll start seeing some of them [commercialization of the tech] this year. We just created a new team, the generative AI team, a couple of months ago; they are very busy. It’s probably the area that I’m spending the most time [in], as well as Mark Zuckerberg and [Chief Product Officer] Chris Cox,” Bosworth told the publication.

In February, Zuckerberg announced a new team focusing on AI tools under CPO Chris Cox. The announcement noted that the company is experimenting with AI-powered chat on WhatsApp and Messenger along with filters for Instagram.

While Meta’s metaverse efforts haven’t panned out as expected, it still seems to be pushing on the idea of creating virtual worlds through generative AI. Bosworth told Nikkei that large language models (LLMs) — like OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s PaLM — will help with 3D model creation as you’ll just have to describe them.

“So previously, if I wanted to create a 3D world, I needed to learn a lot of computer graphics and programming. In the future, you might be able to just describe the world you want to create and have the large language model generate that world for you. And so it makes things like content creation much more accessible to more people,” he said.

While metaverse creation is on the company’s long-term plan, generating more ad revenue is probably the need of the hour. After Apple implemented its App Tracking Transparency feature in 2021, Meta was affected badly. Early last year, the social media company said that this change would cost them $10 billion in 2022.

In February, during the Q4 2022 investors call, Zuckerberg said that “Our management theme for 2023 is the ‘Year of Efficiency’ and we’re focused on becoming a stronger and more nimble organization.” So the company would want to find more avenues for earning money and generative AI seems to be its next bet. During the call, Meta also highlighted that despite the $1 billion annual revenue rate, Reels are not generating enough money.

Meta is not the only company experimenting with generative ads though. Omneky, which presented at TechCrunch Disrupt last year, was using OpenAI’s DALLE-2 and GPT-3 to create campaigns. Movio, which is backed by IDG, Sequoia Capital China and Baidu Ventures, is using generative AI to create marketing videos.