- Facebook launches AI Sandbox, a program to test its new features based on AI and aimed at advertisers
- Among the features offered, there is a background generator for advertisements
- The group also continues to invest in the infrastructures used for AI
After a difficult year, Meta (Facebook’s parent company) announced more encouraging quarterly results in the first quarter of 2023. Mark Zuckerberg also took advantage of this presentation to discuss the group’s efforts in artificial intelligence, which reassured Investors. And in a recent blog post, Meta shares more about how it plans to use AI to optimize online advertising, which is its main source of income.
For example, Meta has just launched a new program called AI Sandbox through which it will test its novelties based on artificial intelligence, for advertisers. Restricted to a small group of advertisers, the features tested in this program include “Text Variation”. This is an AI that will assist the advertiser in the distribution of texts for his audience. As for “Background Generation”, it is a generative AI that generates a background for the advertiser’s products, from prompts in the form of text. And “Image Outcropping”, meanwhile, automatically adapts the visuals for the different formats of Facebook and Instagram, such as Stories or Reels.
© Meta
Meta explains that these tests will allow for feedback, before offering these new features to more advertisers, then making them more widely available. New features are also offered on Meta Advantage, the group’s advertising automation program, which already uses artificial intelligence.
AI and Metaverse
In its announcement, Meta also indicates that it continues to improve its infrastructure, on which artificial intelligence is based, to improve advertising performance. Otherwise, for users, the group is also preparing new features based on generative AI. As a reminder, Meta is developing an AI comparable to ChatGPT, and called LLaMA. In addition, he has already mentioned the new features based on this technology that could land on products such as Facebook, WhatsApp or Instagram.
However, while focusing on AI (competition requires), Meta does not abandon its ambitions in the metaverse, even if the losses accumulate for this activity. During the announcement of the quarterly results, Mark Zuckerberg brushed aside the rumors indicating that Meta is less and less interested in the metaverse.
“A narrative has developed that we’re sort of moving away from focusing on the metaverse vision, so I just want to say up front that’s not accurate”said the CEO. “We have been focused on AI and the metaverse, and we will continue to do so.”
Recently, Meta also shared a study evoking the economic weight that the metaverse will have by 2035, in Europe and the United States. A way for the group to justify its large investments in this area, even if for the moment, the activity is not profitable.
