Meta’s Business AI Handling 10 Million Weekly Conversations

Meta has seen a surge in business users employing its artificial intelligence (AI) tools.

Speaking during the company’s Wednesday (April 29) earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said these tools were handling 10 million conversations a week by late March, compared to 1 million at the start of the year.

And while Meta has not begun monetizing its business AI tools yet as it offers them gratis to small businesses as it attempts to scale, the founder hinted that could change.

“Business AIs today are currently free for most businesses on our messaging apps, but as we make more progress, we expect that we will also work towards establishing a longer-term monetization model,” Zuckerberg told analysts.

Muse Spark, Meta’s first model from the company’s in-house artificial intelligence (AI) lab, debuted during the first quarter and now powers Meta AI across all apps and the standalone Meta AI app. Sessions per user grew double digits following the introduction, with more advanced models now in training.

Meta also rolled out Meta Ads AI Connectors in open beta, allowing advertisers to connect their ad accounts to external AI agents for campaign management and optimization.

Susan Li, Meta’s chief financial officer, also noted that use of the company’s creative tools was scaling as well, with upward of 8 million advertisers using at least one of these offerings. Adoption has been especially strong among small and medium-sized businesses.

“These tools are benefiting performance as well, with advertisers using our video generation feature seeing more than 3% higher conversion rates in tests,” Li said.

Meanwhile, Zuckerberg covered Meta’s long-term vision for AI during the call, framing personal superintelligence as the company’s chief product goal.

“My view is that human progress has always been driven by people pursuing their individual aspirations,” he said.

The company also upped its full-year guidance for capital expenditures, going from its earlier range of $115 billion to $135 billion to a new projection of $125 billion to $145 billion. Meta cited rising cost of memory and additional data center capacity, and acknowledged that it has consistently underestimated its compute needs.

As PYMNTS wrote in March, this level of spending puts Meta in the company of some of the biggest investors in AI infrastructure, including Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

Meta is also reportedly slashing jobs in a move that is widely viewed as an effort to offset the investments it has been making in AI infrastructure. Last week saw a report that the company would cut 8,000 jobs, and leave another 6,000 positions unfilled.