It never really made sense for Meta to get into AI, the motivations were always pretty thin and it seemed like they just wanted to ride the wave.

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dylan604 5 days ago | parent | next [-]

Isn't that what companies are supposed to do by seeing/following/setting trends in a way that increases revenue and profit for the shareholders?

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Insanity 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I somewhat disagree here. Meta is a huge company with multiple products. Experimenting with AI and trying to capitalize on what's bound to be a larger user market, is a valid company angle to take.

It might not pan out, but it's worth trying from a pure business point of view.

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dghlsakjg 5 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Meta's business model is to capture attention - largely with "content" - so they can charge lots of money to sprinkle ads amongst that content.

I can see a lot of utility for Meta to get deeply involved in the unlimited custom content generating machine. They have a lot of data about what sort of content gets people to spend more time with them. They now have the ability to endlessly create exactly what it is that keeps you most engaged and looking at ads.

Frankly, content businesses that get their revenue from ads are one of the most easily monetizable ways to use the outputs of AI.

Yes, it will pollute the internet to the point of making almost all information untrustable, but think of how much money can be extracted along the way!

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siliconc0w 5 days ago | parent [-]

The whole point is novelty/authenticity/scarcity though, if you just have a machine that generates infinite infinitely cute cat videos then people will cease to be interested in cat videos. And its not like they pay content creators anyway.

It's Spain sinking their own economy by importing tons of silver.

	▲	dghlsakjg 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		We have services that will serve you effectively infinite cat videos, and neither cat videos or the websites that do that have ceased to be popular. It is actually the basis for the sites that people tend to spend most of their time and attention on. Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok all live on the users that only want to see infinite cat videos (substitute cat video for your favorite niche). Already much of the content is AI generated, and boy does it do numbers. I am not convinced that novelty, authenticity, or scarcity matter in the business model. If they do, AI has solved novelty, has enough people fooled with authenticity, and scarcity... no one wants their cat video feed to stop.