First we had friends. Then we had influencers. And if Mark Zuckerberg is correct, the next big thing in our social media feeds will be AI generated content. Lots of it.
Zuckerberg described our future feeds during Facebook-parent company Meta's third quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday, describing it as a natural evolution.
“I think were going to add a whole new category of content which is AI generated or AI summarized content, or existing content pulled together by AI in some way," the Meta CEO said. "And I think that that's gonna be very exciting for Facebook and Instagram and maybe Threads, or other kinds of feed experiences over time.”
Zuckerberg touted the company’s Llama large language model and the success of products it powers, such as the Meta AI chatbot that is now used by more than 500 million users every month. But Llama will increasingly play a role across Meta's business, Zuckerberg said, including tools for business customers and advertisers.
As AI tools become more widespread, AI content will proliferate within social media feeds. Such feeds are actively being worked on inside Meta, Zuckerberg noted. “It’s something we’re starting to test different things around.”
“I don’t know if we know what's exactly going to work really well yet, but some things are really promising,” he added. “I have high confidence that over the next several years, this will be one of the important trends and one of the important applications.”
Zuckerberg described the category as the likely next wave of content for platforms like Facebook and Instagram.
Zuckerberg noted how platforms like Facebook and Instagram started off recommending and curating content from a user's friends and family, what Meta called its “connected” algorithm. The platforms then moved to an engagement-based algorithm, recommending content from all over the platforms, mostly from creators and influencers, which Meta targets to individual users based on various “signals."
Signs of the next, AI phase are already out there.
Facebook is already one Meta platform where AI generated content, sometimes referred to as “AI slop,” is increasingly common. Strange images are often created with the goal of going viral and generating payments from Facebook’s creator program, which can be as high as $10 per 1,000 likes on a post, according to a report from 404 Media.
While such content has so far been less prevalent on Instagram, it appears to be on the way. A report by the newsletter User Mag found that an account claiming to be that of a restaurant touting itself as the “#1 restaurant in Austin” does not exist. The account is entirely AI generated content of various photos of fake food and people, even one post of a generated image of Jeff Bezos claiming the Amazon billionaire was “behind the bar” of the restaurant because “One of our chefs happens to be buds with Jeff.”
Despite the subject of the account being entirely fictional, and all of its content AI generated and not disclosed as such, it remains up. In fact, since it was revealed to be a fantasy, the account has gained about 10,000 new followers.
Are you a Meta employee or someone with insight or a tip to share? Contact Kali Hays securely through Signal at +1-949-280-0267 or at kali.hays@fortune.com.
