Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that Meta will form a top-tier product development group to focus exclusively on content-generating AI technologies.
The tech industry has been in a general slowdown for the past while, staging a massive wave of layoffs. In the face of the industry downturn, some technology companies have also contracted their experimentation and “betting” on new technologies and products. But amid the gloom, AI has emerged as a new bright spot in the tech industry’s investment spree.
In an Instagram post, Zuckerberg said that Meta had a number of teams working on generative AI technology, and now management is bringing them together to form a new product group with the goal of developing a great product experience around that technology.
Zuckerberg said Meta’s long-term goal is to develop AI bots that can help consumers in a variety of ways, but at this stage, Meta is developing products about text (i.e., about its two mobile chat tools, WhatsApp and Messenger), images (such as creating special effects and ad products in Instagram), video, and a mix of multi-modal product experiences.
A Meta spokesperson confirmed that the AI product development group is headed by Ahmad Al-Dahle, who will report to Chris Cox, the company’s chief product officer. The spokesperson said the structure is designed to allow Meta’s products to integrate the latest results from the AI R&D group as quickly as possible.
The ChatGPT firestorm has reignited a major AI war in the tech industry. OpenAI, backed by Microsoft, has released ChatGPT, which is capable of conversing and writing. Spurred by ChatGPT, technology companies such as Alphabet and Baidu have announced that they will launch their own similar AI conversational bots.
Last week, Meta announced a new language model called “LLaMA” (language models are a core component of AI conversational technology), which Meta says can be used by research institutions, government entities, civil society, and academia through non-commercial licensing.
