san francisco The Facebook group Meta wants to get more involved in the race for artificial intelligence. When asked about the success of systems like the chatbot ChatGPT, Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg said on Wednesday: “These are fascinating things.” Zuckerberg announced that his company would be introducing a number of its own products later this year.
At the same time, Meta presented figures for the past quarter: Despite another decline in sales, the company performed better than analysts had expected. High costs for severance payments and the restructuring of the group also caused a sharp drop in profits.
However, Meta signaled a recovery in long-sluggish ad revenue. At the same time, CEO Zuckerberg announced tighter cost controls and additional share buybacks worth $40 billion.
Meta titles then rose by more than 21 percent in after-hours trading, which was the largest jump in the share price since 2013. In their slipstream, the titles of Google’s mother Alphabet, which is also heavily dependent on online ads, and Snapchat operator Snap moved up to five percent Before.
Zuckerberg wants to react to the success of ChatGPT with his own applications later this year. The AI-supported creation of text or images could help deliver content for meta-products such as Facebook or Instagram. “We want to help the users of our apps to be even more creative,” said Zuckerberg.
Technological hurdles still exist
But before such tools can be rolled out for the billions of users of platforms like Facebook or Instagram, technological hurdles would have to be cleared. Currently, the automated creation of text or images still costs pennies, said Zuckerberg. That is still too much for large scaling. Improvements are still needed here, said Zuckerberg. “There are different approaches that we’re taking right now,” Zuckerberg said.
ChatGPT is a program from the start-up OpenAI that can produce complex texts in many languages on command. ChatGPT belongs to a group of programs capable of performing creative tasks, which experts call generative artificial intelligence. This also includes programs such as Midjourney or Stable Diffusion, which can produce detailed images from just a few words.
Shortly before OpenAI, Meta also presented its own AI chatbot, the Blenderbot. However, this was mostly limited to much shorter answers. In addition, the bot repeatedly produced racist and anti-Semitic statements in tests.
The Galactica tool, which like ChatGPT is based on large language models, was launched in November. But after just three days, Meta disabled the tool from the public again after it was criticized for misrepresenting scientific studies.
Meta has several solutions in preparation
Meta has been working on AI technologies for many years. Acclaimed researcher Yann LeCun leads the division at Meta. In a discussion round a few days ago, he said: “As far as the underlying technologies are concerned, ChatGPT is not particularly innovative.”
“OpenAI isn’t particularly advanced compared to the other labs,” said LeCun. “It’s not just Google and Meta, it’s a half-dozen startups that basically have very similar technology,” LeCun added.
At Meta, a number of solutions are in preparation. “There are about 12 million businesses that advertise on Facebook, and most of them are small businesses that just don’t have the resources to design a new, beautifully designed ad,” LeCun noted. “So for them, generative art could be a big help.”
LeCun then tweeted: “If Google and Meta haven’t published anything similar to ChatGPT, it’s not because they can’t. But because they don’t want to.”
Large corporations cannot afford to make mistakes like small start-ups. “By releasing public demos, which, no matter how impressive and useful, have major flaws, established companies have less to gain and more to lose than money-hungry startups,” LeCun wrote.
ChatGPT was also repeatedly criticized for producing false statements or inventing sources. Unlike the chatbot Blenderbot from Meta, however, no anti-Semitic or racist statements were initially known.
All in all, 2023 should be a “year of efficiency” for the group, said Zuckerberg. The focus is on being “stronger and more agile”. Meta will remove layers in middle management so decisions can be made faster. Projects that do not bring the desired results should be stopped more quickly. In the current year, expenses are also expected to be lower than previously estimated, partly due to lower investments in data centers.
For the current quarter, the US group expects sales of 26 to 28.5 billion dollars. Analysts had previously forecast an average of $27.14 billion.
In the past quarter, sales fell by four percent year-on-year to a good $32.16 billion. Somewhat lower proceeds of 31.5 billion dollars were expected on the market. Profits, on the other hand, collapsed by 55 percent to $4.65 billion, stronger than expected. It was the fifth consecutive decline in earnings.
Meta announced the first wave of layoffs in the company’s history in November. 11,000 jobs are to be cut. This was preceded by a drop in profits. The group booked restructuring costs of $4.2 billion for the quarter.
The company suffers from high costs and strong competitive pressure from TikTok. The Chinese video app is chasing Instagram users away from the Meta subsidiary. In addition, Apple’s new data protection rules make it more difficult for iPhone & Co users to personalize advertising. It is therefore considered less effective and generates less revenue.
At the same time, the “Reality Labs” division is piling up billions in losses, triggering displeasure among investors. Among other things, the development of the “Metaversum” is bundled in this business area, a virtual world that Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg regards as particularly promising. These factors had also led to the wave of layoffs in the company’s history in November.
Meanwhile, the number of users continues to grow. Facebook now has two billion daily active users – an increase of 16 million within three months. At least one Meta app was last used by 2.96 billion users per day, up from 2.93 billion three months earlier.
With agency material
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