Mark Zuckerberg Made Meta A.I. the Main Character in Q1 Earnings

Much of the conversation was centered around the new Meta A.I., an updated version of the company’s personal assistant model that is built into its social platforms.

Meta held an A.I.-focused earnings call yesterday (April 24) following its release. Much of the conversation centered on the new Meta A.I., an updated version of the company’s personal assistant model built into its social platforms. The feature launched last week (April 18) on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. On the call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared that the growth of Meta A.I. and other A.I. products “and the engagement around them” will be his focus for this and much of next year. “We should all have quite a bit of confidence that if those are on a good track to scale, then they’re going to end up being very large businesses,” Zuckerberg added.

The first three months of the year were good for Meta. Net income was up 117 percent from the year before, from $5.7 billion to $12.4 billion. Revenue was up 27 percent to $36.4 billion. Chief financial officer Susan Li reported that the predicted total expenditures and capital expenditures for the year are now higher. Li also noted that the company is not giving guidance around the growth of its “Family of Apps,” which refers to Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger. Revenue for this sector was $36 billion, up 27 percent from the same quarter the year before—primarily driven by ad revenue, which was $35.6 billion.   

“We’re being very disciplined with the allocation of new resources,” Li said, comparing it to “a muscle” that was built over the last year, and which Meta feels is now important to maintain. Zuckerberg stressed that video “continues to be a bright spot” for the company; reels are responsible for half the time users spend on Instagram and are the primary driver of the growth of video across both Facebook and Instagram. Meta is choosing not to disclose numbers about the TikTok competitor’s contributions anymore, though. Li emphasized Meta’s investment in A.I. products and the company’s hope to use this generative technology to power video recommendations. 

“We’re planning to extend the singular model architecture to recommend content across not just Facebook Reels but also Facebook’s video tab,” Li said. “While it’s still too early to share specific results, we’re optimistic that the new model architecture will unlock increasingly relevant video recommendations over time.” 

Zuckerberg also discussed how A.I. technology is helping create a “unified” recommendation system for Reels, live videos and long-form videos across its platforms.