Meta can't afford not to invest into generative AI. They are constantly fighting to stay relevant. Just see how TikTok's better recommender algorithm and content creation tools made Instagram play catch-up.

I'm not certain about the direction of Meta, but for now it seems that their most important areas are entertainment (Instagram, Reels) and messaging (WhatsApp, Messenger), not social networking (Facebook), which is dying.

For entertainment and messaging, generative AI is going to be huge. In entertainment, content creation and discovery will be severely advanced by AI. For messaging, at the very least, users will expect AI support in message composition and company-customer communication.

Generative AI might be able to create compelling characters to interact with in Facebook/Metaverse. That would be a weird, but possibly therapeutic?

It has a lot of uses for their metaverse push. You could imagine a future social platform where AI generated pictures and video instead of selfies is the communication medium du jour.

But in that sense they're not far behind the pack as it is.

Great point, there might not be anything for them there despite the insane hype right now. A couple of useful things here and there, sure, but not much to profitably "pivot" their billion users into.

Generative AI makes their business case for the meta-verse actually work. You can populate the meta-verse with convincing NPCs: they fit in, they finesse social interactions, they kickstart communities and befriend the unpopular, and every once in a while they drop some product placement. For an introverted, anxious, and digital-preferring generation, this could be perfect.

It's an unbelievably sad future to live in what you're describing.

Brought to you by dystopia.inc

And literally predicted by South Park

https://youtu.be/jCkL_zuXcY8

https://youtu.be/dCDIgoSlNXg

https://youtu.be/vtOgzVD_zDI

https://youtu.be/kklek8cNDIQ

NPCs that are convincing if you ignore the fact that they only can remember less than 5 minutes of interaction because they lack long-term context due to the nature of LLMs?

I'm not sure if lonely people would rather talk to an Alzheimers anime girl or be alone.

Having the NPC store some notes about previous conversations or look up stuff in the chat history doesn't seem impossible. Also if you don't want to build a relationship but just chat a bit you don't need long term memory.

People play games today with weak AI. Generative AI might be fun in VR, but it's not the "killer feature". Generative AI is fun in non-VR too.

I have lots of friends online. I don't need 3D VR interactions with them.

Absolutely disagree. The metaverses value proposition is the ability to create hyper customized communities and experiences. Generative AI is a near requirement to see that vision. Many, many people do not have friends online, or they have different interests, or for whatever other reason may prefer interacting with AIs who do exactly what they want.