As the AI race between Big Tech firms heats up, Meta Platforms Inc is launching a new top-level product group focusing on generative artificial intelligence, AI Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said on Monday.
AI has been a bright spot for investments in the tech industry, which has been struggling with slowing growth, and has cut thousands of jobs as well as dialled down on experimental bets to beat the downturn.
Zuckerberg said in an Instagram post that they're starting to combine a lot of the teams working on generative AI to create a group that is focused on building delightful experiences around this technology.
Zuckerberg said over the long term, we'll focus on developing AI personas that can help people in a variety of ways, but for now we are exploring experiences with text chat in WhatsApp and Messenger with images creative Instagram filters and ad formats and video and multimodal experiences. The spokesperson said that this will allow Meta to implement the research team's findings in Meta's products.
The public battle to dominate the AI space started late last year with the launch of Microsoft-backed OpenAI's ChatGPT, which has since prompted tech heavyweights from Alphabet Inc to China's Baidu Inc to announce their own offerings.
Last week, Meta said it was releasing a new large language model LLaMA, the core software of a new AI system, which would be available for researchers and entities affiliated with government, civil society and academia.
The shares of Meta Platforms fell by 0.5 per cent on Monday.