Mark Zuckerberg declares AI-generated content the future as Meta pivots from metaverse

Mark Zuckerberg is all in on AI as the new social media

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg's metaverse dreams seem to have been replaced by a new vision: an AI-generated social feed. In an earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg reiterated his belief that AI will become the next big media format, making feeds "more immersive and interactive:" We started with text, and then moved to photos when we got phones with cameras, and then moved to video when mobile networks got fast enough. Soon, we'll see an explosion of new media formats that are more immersive and interactive, and only possible because of advances in AI. Zuckerberg added that apps currently "feel like algorithms that recommend content." But that's going to change, according to Zuckerberg, as Meta's apps will eventually greet users with AI that "understands" them, can serve up content they like, and "generate great personalized content." Last year, Zuckerberg similarly brought up an AI-infused social media, saying that Meta would "add yet another huge corpus of content" to its recommendation system as AI makes content "easier to create and remix." Meta has already realized part of this plan, as it launched a new "Vibes" feed in the Meta AI app that lets you scroll through a feed of short, AI-generated videos. During the call, Zuckerberg also hinted at a new format that will allow users to create a world or game using a prompt and then share it with friends, adding that videos could become interactive as well. "There's definitely a version of the future where any video that you see, you can tap on and jump into it and... experience it in a more meaningful way," Zuckerberg said. As the call progressed, Zuckerberg didn't bring up goals for the metaverse, instead saying that the company's investments in virtual reality (VR) and Horizon Worlds will "pair well with these AI advances," helping to bring these experiences to people "through mobile." Meta's Reality Labs, which includes a metaverse division, reported a $6.02 billion operating loss during the last three months of 2025. Earlier this month, Meta laid off at least 1,000 employees in the division, while shutting down three of its VR studios. Meta reported revenue of $59.9 billion during the final quarter of 2025 and a net income of $22.8 billion. It seems the company plans to open up more streams of revenue by monetizing its Meta AI chatbot, too, as Zuckerberg told investors that there will be opportunities for "subscriptions and advertising" with Meta AI, lining up with TechCrunch's report that the company plans on putting premium AI features behind a paywall.

Meta: Company to 'dramatically change' with AI, Zuckerberg says

Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg says artificial intelligence (AI) tools used by technology workers are improving so much that just one engineer can now do the work it formerly took a whole team to achieve. During a call with financial analysts on Wednesday to discuss the Facebook-owner's 2025 financial results, Zuckerberg said he is expecting "2026 to be the year that AI dramatically changes the way we work." Like other big tech firms, Meta has regularly cut thousands of roles at a time in recent years in an effort to remove layers of management and streamline operations. Zuckerberg's comments seemed to hint at further layoffs at the tech giant. "We're starting to see projects that used to take big teams now be accomplished by a single, very talented person," he said. Already this year, Meta has laid off several hundred workers mainly in its Reality Labs division, a part of the company that focuses on its "metaverse" ambitions, hardware products and AI initiatives. Zuckerberg said Meta is investing more across the company in AI tools that help employees like software engineers complete more work. As workers use the tools to become "significantly more productive," he said there is "a big delta between the people who do it and do it well and the people who don't." "What we were talking about is, I think it's very hard for anyone exactly to predict what the shape of how organisations working is going to feel, but I just think the fact that agents are really starting to work now is quite profound," he added. The company is aggressively spending on AI projects and related infrastructure, pouring $77bn (£55bn) last year into its attempt to get ahead of the AI boom. Meta said on Wednesday that it expects to spend twice that amount this year. His comments came as Meta announced figures for the last three months of 2025 that showed expenses rose faster than revenues, which squeezed profit margins. Meta shares were around 7.5% higher in extended trading in New York after the announcement. Some in the industry warn that such major investments risk creating an AI bubble, similar to one seen in the dotcom boom that peaked in 2000. Chuck Robbins, chairman and chief executive of Cisco Systems, told the BBC that while AI could end up "bigger than the internet", the current market is probably a bubble and some companies "won't make it". JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon has voiced similar concerns, while Google CEO Sundar Pichai said there was some "irrationality" to the AI boom. Sam Altman, whose company OpenAI kicked off the current obsession with AI in the tech industry, was more direct. "Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes," he said last year.

'AI That Understands You': Mark Zuckerberg Plans to Deepen AI's Presence in Our Online Lives

Six months into its big AI turnaround, Meta believes 2026 will be the year it starts reaping the benefits. The tech giant has spent billions upon billions on Meta Superintelligence Labs, poaching top talent from the likes of OpenAI, Apple, and more in the hopes of revitalizing its failing AI initiatives. The company is hoping to prove that it's finally eating the fruits of that commitment with a bunch of new AI models and products it will ship out over the coming months, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on the company's earnings call on Wednesday. But maybe don't expect anything groundbreaking. "I think this is going to be a long-term effort," Zuckerberg said. "This is a journey that we're on, and the first set of things that we put out, I think, are going to be more about showing the trajectory that we're on rather than being a single moment in time." Going beyond just model and product announcements, Meta is hoping that 2026 is the year it can use AI to make its existing offerings even more hyper-tailored to you. For the average user, it's going to look like an Instagram feed of eerily targeted content, thanks to an LLM-enhanced recommendation system that can understand "people's unique personal goals" and tailor ads and feeds accordingly. "Today, our apps feel like algorithms that recommend content," Zuckerberg said. "Soon, you'll open our apps, and you'll have an AI that understands you and also happens to be able to show you great content or even generate great personalized content for you." These recommendation models will leverage the world knowledge and reasoning capabilities of LLMs to make better guesses of what content you would like. Meta CFO Susan Li said that it will especially help with more recently posted content that has less engagement data to base recommendations on. As of last month, the company has officially started using AI chat history to inform hyper-targeted ads and posts across platforms, except for in the European Union, where it is forced to roll out less personalized ads due to strict consumer protections. Besides advancing the algorithm, AI is already "driving incremental time spent on Instagram," Li said, through AI-dubbed videos into local languages. "Hundreds of millions of people are watching AI-translated videos every day," Li said. This personalization effort will also translate to Meta AI offerings. The more personalized the responses are, the more the user engages with AI, Li said. But that might not always be a good thing. OpenAI spent the past few months under intense scrutiny and some legal repercussions after it turned out that addictive AI chatbot designs inherently came with risks, especially for the mental health of vulnerable users like kids and teens. Meta already doesn't have a good track record when it comes to AI safety guardrails for vulnerable populations, and especially for children. The company has been the subject of regulatory scrutiny after a Reuters report from the summer found that Meta allowed its chatbots to engage in "sensual" conversations with minors. On the earnings call, Meta executives said the company might experience material loss this year due to "scrutiny on youth-related issues." Zuck's quest for an "immersive" digital experience The AI-enhanced feed is just a continuation of Zuckerberg's longstanding vision for a more "immersive and interactive" digital experience. It's the same vision that drove his huge investment and corporate shift to the Metaverse, a venture that has now amassed roughly $80 billion in total operating losses. According to Zuckerberg, we have seen online content evolve from text to photo to video, but it has not reached its final frontier. "Soon, we'll see an explosion of new media formats that are more immersive and interactive and only possible because of advances in AI," Zuckerberg said in the call. "Our feeds will become more interactive overall." While he previously believed that virtual reality office spaces were the way this would materialize, it seems Zuckerberg has now changed his focus to artificial intelligence and wearables. Earlier this month, Meta laid off 1,500 people in its Metaverse division as part of an initiative to shift investment from VR to wearables, like smart glasses. "Glasses are the ultimate incarnation of this vision. They're going to be able to see what you see, hear what you hear, talk to you, and help you as you go about your day," Zuckerberg said. He even compared smart glasses to smartphones. "I think that we're at a moment similar to when smartphones arrived, and it was clearly only a matter of time until all those flip phones became smartphones," Zuckerberg said. "It's hard to imagine a world in several years where most glasses that people wear aren't AI glasses."

Zuckerberg promises 2026 AI blitz after Meta "rebuilt the foundations

Mark Zuckerberg announced on an investor call that Meta users will encounter new AI models and products within months, following the company's 2025 rebuild of its AI program foundations through a restructured AI lab. Zuckerberg stated, "In 2025, we rebuilt the foundations of our AI program," directly referencing the recent restructuring of Meta's AI lab. This effort positions the company to deploy advancements promptly. He outlined plans for the immediate rollout, saying, "Over the coming months, we're going to start shipping our new models and products... and I expect us to steadily push the frontier over the course of the new year." These statements point to a 2026 rollout without specifying exact timelines or individual product details. Within this strategy, Zuckerberg identified AI-driven commerce as a key focus area for Meta. He elaborated, "This also has implications for commerce." The company plans to introduce new agentic shopping tools designed to help users identify precise product selections from businesses listed in Meta's catalog. These tools aim to streamline product discovery by leveraging AI capabilities tailored to user needs. This direction mirrors developments elsewhere in the technology sector. Google and OpenAI have each constructed platforms supporting agent-enabled transactions. Partners such as Stripe and Uber have committed to these systems, enabling integrated payment and service functionalities within AI-driven environments. Meta differentiates itself through its extensive access to personal data. Zuckerberg remarked, "We're starting to see the promise of AI that understands our personal context, including our history, our interests, our content and our relationships." He further explained the core value of such agents: "A lot of what makes agents valuable is the unique context that they can see, and we believe that Meta will be able to provide a uniquely personal experience." This data advantage underpins Meta's approach to delivering customized AI interactions.

Mark Zuckerberg says AI generated content is the future of social media

In a recent earnings call with investors, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spent a few moments discussing how AI will become the next big thing in social media. That is, AI-generated personalized content that includes text, photos, and video. "We started with text, and then moved to photos when we got phones with cameras, and then moved to video when mobile networks got fast enough," Mark Zuckerberg said. "Soon, we'll see an explosion of new media formats that are more immersive and interactive, and only possible because of advances in AI." And when it comes to social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Meta's various apps, AI will apparently "understand" users in a way current algorithms don't, and this AI will apparently "generate great personalized content" just for you. Not only that, but users will be able to create worlds, games, and interactive content they can share with friends and family, and remix or "jump into" this content to experience it more meaningfully. Now, when it comes to AI-generated videos and images, the Meta AI app already has a feed where you can scroll through short AI-generated videos in a TikTok-like fashion. And with that, the phrase "AI slop" is used by many to describe what they see. Of course, there are exceptions, but the idea of social media feeds filled with AI-generated videos, images, and experiences isn't something people are clamoring for. During the earnings call, Mark Zuckerberg didn't talk about the previous big thing at Meta, the metaverse, probably on account of the company's Reality Labs division behind its virtual reality (VR) and Horizon Worlds platforms reporting a $6.02 billion operating loss for the last quarter. On the plus side, Meta's $59.9 billion in revenue and $22.8 billion in the quarter show that the pivot to AI has been positive for the company.

Mark Zuckerberg Says AI Will 'Dramatically' Change the Way We Work This Year

Zuckerberg told investors that he believes "2026 is going to be the year that AI starts to dramatically change the way that we work." He added that Meta is "starting to see projects that used to require big teams now be accomplished by a single, very talented person." As a result, he said, Meta is "elevating individual contributors and flattening teams." As for how AI will change Meta's products, Zuckerberg said that the company's social feeds will become "more interactive." Instead of just using an algorithm to recommend content, he said, "soon you'll open our apps and you'll have an AI that understands you and also happens to be able to show you great content, or even generate great personalized content for you." This focus on personalization is most evident in Meta's booming smart glasses business, Zuckerberg said. The company has found great success in partnering with glasses designers like Ray-Ban and Oakley to develop AI-powered glasses that users can chat with. Zuckerberg said that sales of the glasses tripled in 2025 and are "some of the fastest-growing consumer electronics in history."

Zuckerberg's Meta Plans Massive AI Spending Push to Build 'Personal Superintelligence'

"As we plan for the future, we will continue to invest very significantly in infrastructure to train leading models and deliver personal super intelligence to billions of people and businesses around the world," Zuckerberg was quoted by CNBC during the earnings call. The CEO stressed that 2026 would be a crucial year for AI, with the company's investments aimed at creating a "personal super intelligence," which he announced last year. Zuckerberg did not reveal whether Meta will launch new AI products or whether there will be any impact on revenue generation. "I mean, we're going to roll out new products over the course of the year. I think the important thing is, we're not just launching one thing, and we're building a lot of things," the Meta CEO said during the earnings call. According to CNBC's report, Meta's TBD AI unit, under the leadership of CEO Alexandr Wang, has been testing a new AI model code-named Avocado. It is intended to be the successor to Meta's Llama family of AI systems. Wang, during the recent meeting on Wednesday, said, "I expect our first models will be good but, more importantly, will show the rapid trajectory that we're on. And then I expect us to steadily push the frontier over the course of the year as we continue to release new models."