Meta, the parent company of Facebook, has announced new artificial intelligence (AI) tools to help businesses create marketing materials. With these AI tools, companies can now generate images for their ad campaigns and customize them with text queries. The feature will be powered by Meta’s large Llama 3 language model and is expected to be available worldwide by the end of the year.
The unveiling of these enterprise AI tools comes after Meta announced an increase in funding for further AI innovation during its most recent earnings call on April 24. The company aims to spend $5 billion more than originally planned to develop new AI products for consumers, developers, businesses and hardware manufacturers. Despite the investment in AI, the announcement sent the company’s shares down 15%.
Meta spending on AI and metaverse development division Reality Labs is projected to range from $35 billion to $40 billion by the end of this year. This focus on AI at Meta has raised questions about its cost-effectiveness, as Muddu Sudhakar, CEO of generative AI company Aisera, compared it to past technology shifts such as the shift from on-prem to cloud or from desktop to mobile. He emphasized the importance of artificial intelligence for megatechnological companies such as Microsoft, Google, Meta or Amazon and highlighted the billions of dollars these companies are investing in artificial intelligence innovation.