Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, is revolutionizing the way businesses create advertising materials. The company has introduced new artificial intelligence (AI) tools that allow advertisers to generate images and ad text for their campaigns using AI technology. In a blog post on Tuesday (May 7), Meta announced that business owners can provide the AI with an image of their products and generate new backgrounds for it. The model also offers image expansion, resizing the image to fit a range of sizes for different use cases.
Furthermore, Meta is introducing new text generation features that allow businesses to create ad headlines as well as the main ad copy. The company is testing ways for the AI to replicate businesses’ various tones and voices by highlighting key selling points based on past campaigns. This feature will be powered by Meta’s large language model Llama 3, with plans to make ad text generation available worldwide by the end of the year.
The unveiling of these new AI tools for businesses comes after Meta announced increased funding to drive further AI innovation during its latest earnings call on April 24. The company aims to spend $5 billion more than initially planned to develop new AI products for consumers, developers, businesses, and hardware manufacturers. Meta’s spending on AI and the metaverse-development division Reality Labs is projected to range from $35 billion to $40 billion by the end of this year. However, despite the investment in AI, the announcement caused a 15% drop in the company’s stock.
The focus on AI at Meta has raised questions about the profitability of the technology. Muddu Sudhakar, CEO of generative AI company Aisera, compared the current focus on AI to past technology shifts such as the transition from on-prem to the cloud or from the desktop to mobile. He emphasized the importance of AI for megatech companies like Microsoft, Google, Meta or Amazon and highlighted
