My sense is that they know that legacy FB is no longer a growth product, the regulatory environment has been hostile to their previous strategy of buying products in new markets (instagram, whatsapp), and they know they need to come up with _something_ to stay relevant and keep growing if and when growth from those products starts to wane. I guess the regulatory environment in the US has shifted a little, but populist politics even on the right aren’t super friendly to conglomeration, and the EU has only grown more hostile to it.

you should read their earnings report carefully - it will clear up the confusion about “FB is no longer a growth product” and things like that :)

Sure, I know that their revenue is still mind boggling. But I also think it’s pretty clear that FB blue or whatever is no longer front of mind in the zeitgeist. Things are fine now but they’re trying to figure out how to keep that going.

as does every other company, 24/7

I’m not sure what your point is here? The question was why Meta has an interest in developing an independent AI offering. I’m replying with one possible answer to that question, and your contention is … that the answer is wrong because other business think the same way?

Commoditize the compliment. They know they need AI to make their products keep up with the industry. They don't want to be reliant on their competitors (Microsoft or Google) for that AI.

They also don't want their competitors to grow by selling AI, which is why they give away their models.

Here are some more thoughts...

Core product health

Based on a key goal to enable the virtuous cycle "Meaningful content --> More engagement --> More $" * Content health ("quality"): Keeps content creators on their game even up their game to generate more content, more personalized content, and perhaps more interesting content

* Content quantity (#): Makes all of us up our game and become better content creators

* Super personalization: Produce just the content on-demand that can get engagement. It's likely already happening

Core product growth

* A hedge in case they have content inventory challenges or AI is able to produce better content than creators

* FB/WA/IG? growth means targeting more and more local businesses with new services e.g. chatbot for SMBs

* Search: Chatbot/answerbot is a thing. Wean some Google Search traffic and keep it within their ecosystem

Company health and longevity

* AI-based automation and efficiency for great number of use cases

* It's great marketing, attracts talent, and enhances the brand

* Finally, as a tech company, cannot not invest meaningfully in the next great new tech trend

It's a win any way they look at it.

edit: formatting

IMO their original product simply shows less and less meaningful content every year. Originally you'd go to facebook because "I want to see what are my friends up to." Now it's "I want to waste my life by watching 30 second videos that make me upset."

The AI generated content is not going to have meaning. It can make a really cute picture of a baby, but it's not your friend from high school's baby.

They want to be Google, or at least what Google used to be. But the reality is that they have only ever built and launched one successful product on their own: Facebook. Everything else is either acquired or has been a huge failure.

They probably have some talented people stashed away somewhere, but it's pretty obvious that they are completely unable to leverage that talent to produce anything worthwhile at this point. Their strategic direction has also been a mess for years, but that is easy to ignore as long as your cash cows are still printing money.

All of their products are prime real estate for AI integration. But they need strong models that work well. L3 style but with current tool use / agentic stuff. They have "internal markets" for lots of niches. Auto store for mom&pop shops that use fb markets. Auto customer support. Auto chatbots for brands. Companions to keep people online and using their products. Flirty chatbots to bring in the new crop of users. And so on...

Remember it's not their money that they don't know what to do with, the investors are the ones with money they don't know what to do with. That's why they bet on technology stocks.

Zuckerberg and Musk have no choice but to be seen loudly investing in the latest cutting-edge technologies in order to keep their stock pumped. To fail to do this is to have the brand rot, the growth collapse, and the whole scheme come crashing to down like a house of cards.

Their ‘metaverse’ did not work out great and they are trying something else.

Zuckerberg has basically complete control over Meta, and sits on a huge pile of cash. While FB still generates a ton of profit, it's clear there is a limit to its future growth.

So, what do you do in such a situation? You look for new markets where you could become a new leader. That's probably one reason for the whole push into Virtual/Augmented Reality, which so far hasn't really shown great results for the billions poured into it.

So, what's next?

Machine Learning played a huge role in successfully putting ads into the FB news feed, so there's already some ML expertise in house. And there are probably plenty of use cases for ML/AI in AR/VR too, and AI is all the hype, so why not go there next?