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Title: Meta is a mulling ads and a 'premium' version of its AI assistant,
Mark Zuckerberg says

Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2025 22:52:02 +0000
Link: https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-is...

One day after Meta rolled out its standalone AI app, Mark Zuckerberg has
shared more about how the company plans to eventually monetize its generative
AI assistant. During the companyΓÇÖs first quarter earnings call, Zuckerberg
said Meta AI could one day show ads and product recommendations. He also
hinted at plans for a subscription component for those who want a more
ΓÇ£premiumΓÇ¥ version of the assistant.

"I think that there will be a large opportunity to show product
recommendations or ads, as well as a premium service for people who want to
unlock more compute for additional functionality or intelligence,ΓÇ¥
Zuckerberg said.

He added that for now the company is more focused on growing Meta AIΓÇÖs
usage. (He announced yesterday that Meta Ai had reached ΓÇ£almostΓÇ¥ 1
billion monthly users.) ΓÇ£I expect that we're going to be largely focused on
scaling and deepening engagement for at least the next year before we'll
really be ready to start building out the business here,ΓÇ¥ he said.

ZuckerbergΓÇÖs comments ΓÇö just one day after Meta introduced its standalone
AI app ΓÇö underscores how important the assistant is to the company. The
Facebook founder has repeatedly said he wants Meta AI to be the most used AI
assistant in the world, and he said on WednesdayΓÇÖs call that a standalone
app would be particularly important for attracting US users.

MetaΓÇÖs strategy for monetizing the assistant in many ways mirrors its
approach to Threads, which only just began expanding its early experiments
with ads this month long after it reached hundreds of millions of users.
Speaking of Threads, Zuckerberg also shared some new milestones for Threads,
saying that text-based app now has 350 million monthly active users and that
time spent on the platform has increased 35 percent over the last six months
thanks to improvements to the companyΓÇÖs recommendations systems.

Later in the call, MetaΓÇÖs CFO Susan Li shared that the company has also
been testing its Llama model to power ThreadsΓÇÖ recommendations and that the
addition of the large language model has led to a 4 percent increase in time
spent. ΓÇ£It remains early here, but a big focus this year will be on
exploring how we can deploy this for other content types, including photos
and videos,ΓÇ¥ she said.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at
https://www.engadget.com/social-media/meta-is...
version-of-its-ai-assistant-mark-zuckerberg-says-225202560.html?src=rss

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