Meta continues to dominate the open-source market with its latest powerful open-source model Llama 3.1 405B. The developer circle has already gone berserk over the model’s enhanced capabilities, which is said to surpass OpenAI’s GPT-4o.
The new model is another promising step in accelerating CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s metaverse dream.
AI-Generated Social Media
Zuckerberg’s vision of making an AI social media falls in line with the current creator market.
“There are almost 200 million creators on our platforms. They are all trying to build their community. People want to interact with them, and there aren’t enough hours in the day,” said Zuckerberg in a recent interview with Bloomberg.
Zuckerberg believes that an AI version will solve this problem. “I want to make it so that every single one of them can easily train an AI version of themselves; they can make it what they want,” he said.
He also believes that through an AI version, the artist or creator will have control over how they would interact with their community. Meta announced that the latest model Llama 3.1 405B is integrated into Meta AI on Whatsapp and Meta.ai.
Furthermore, the Meta AI chatbot will now support Hindi too.
Source: LinkedIn
Uninterrupted Engagement
With this vision, Zuckerberg is promoting the very concept on which any form of social media works — engagement. As of 2024, Instagram users spend an average of 33 minutes per day on the platform, which was 15 minutes per day in 2019. However, the concern of the platform losing users has also come up.
The new AI mode could be the next best way to keep Meta’s users hooked to the platform. “I think that’s going to be great and there’s going to be millions or, eventually hundreds of millions of those,” he said.
With Meta rolling out a number of product features in the past many months, the likes of AI stickers and digital avatars, the company has only found more ways to keep the interaction going.
“I think that people want to connect with each other. I actually think that all the other stuff is generally noise. But, technology allows you to do that in a better way,” said Zuckerberg.
Metaverse Stays Strong
“The metaverse thing was always going to be a very long-term thing. I think some things have been better than I thought. Some have gone slower,” said Zuckerberg when asked about his vision and performance of metaverse.
Meta has been building a well-connected web of metaverse via their products over the last few years. With AI in the picture, Zuckerberg believes it has surpassed his assumptions.
“If you asked me five years ago, I would’ve guessed that AR would come before AI, not the other way around. So, some of this is just kind of setting yourselves up to ride the different waves when they come in,” he said.
Zuckerberg also remains positive about the trend in which tech has evolved. Referring to Facebook, which was text-heavy when released, he said it brought in photos and videos as smartphones and improved mobile networks came into the picture. “I just don’t think that’s the end of the line. I think it gets more immersive.”
The latest Ray Ban Meta glasses are a perfect example of metaverse working well, especially after the AI acceleration. The first version of the smart glasses, which was released three years ago, missed the mark.
However, with Meta AI’s integration with the eyewear that allows one to have an immersive and seamless interaction, the glasses were back in vogue.
“They’re stylish. They’re good glasses. It’s a great form factor for AI,” said Zuckerberg.
No One AI to Rule Them All
While the possibility of metaverse’s resurgence is evident, Zuckerberg is also aware that they will not be the only ones to come up with it, a philosophy that supports Meta’s open-source motive.
“A pretty core part of our philosophy is we don’t believe there’s going to be, like, one AI to rule them all. Our vision is that there’s going to be millions or just billions of different models out there,” said Zuckerberg.
In the context of organisations attempting to create a super-intelligent entity, Zuckerberg compares them to playing God. This perspective is viewed as both incorrect and unappealing.
