Meta's pro-AI ad campaign is conspicuously light on AI

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Imran Shaikh** (0:08)
That's a dog. You will not have to lift a finger.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:11)
Bobby and Connie hard-launch their relationship. Now that we're dating, it's important your parents know I'm a man. And the alley guys are, well, they're still the alley guys.

**Imran Shaikh** (0:20)
Yep.

**SPEAKER_1** (0:21)
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**Imran Shaikh** (0:30)
Meta's pro-AI ad campaign is conspicuously light on AI.
In the face of AI content, profiles, and sloth, Meta hopes a new Facebook verified program will help human users interact with other humans. Based on a facial recognition selfie checked against your existing profile pics, the company says the process will only take a few minutes. It's interesting that Meta has chosen to use facial recognition, given recent legal settlements and the pushback over facial recognition inside its smart glasses. To qualify, you will have to be over 18 and in good standing with Facebook's community standards. Once you've passed the test, your verified badge will appear across Marketplace, Dating, and other parts of Facebook sites and services. The big difference between this and the Facebook badge of old is that it's explicitly only identity confirmation, not endorsement, from Facebook or any kind of guarantee of their trustworthiness. Unlike Meta verified, it's entirely free. The feature comes as a wave of scammers and bad actors are utilizing generative AI tools to create and use fake profiles with realistic profile images, photos, and backstory capable of sending automated messages at scale. It's an attempt by Meta to protect its users, to some extent, from fraud and scams. The feature won't be available for pages or promote accounts and will be gradually rolled out across Facebook, starting in select markets with plans to expand globally.
More Meta news and Mark Zuckerberg really wants you to believe that AI is good, actually. But the centerpiece of his company's new optimistic ad campaign, at least for now, is a one-minute commercial for Meta's AI efforts that features very little AI. According to a Meta spokesperson, the ad is the start of a broader effort from the company to present an alternative view to AI do-mers and those who have sketched out a dystopian vision for the future. As we enter this next wave with AI, we continue to believe the future is for everyone, Zuckerberg wrote in a post accompanying the video. Continuing, we're focused on giving every person the tools to reach your full potential and making sure the benefits of technology are distributed to everyone. Notably, this is the same company which in recent months has used the supposed productivity benefits of AI as an excuse to lay off many thousands of its own staff. The same company that has been accused of using AI to justify cuts that disproportionately affected workers on medical leave. The same company that is being sued by publishers for allegedly training its AI in copyrighted material. The same company that once had an internal policy document that suggested it was permissible for AI chatbots to have quote sensual unquote conversations with miners.
Those guys. So what are the benefits of AI?
It's hard to say because the commercial makes very few references to any of Meta's AI features. Instead, it shows a bunch of non-descript footage. A crowd walking, people smiling, a couple dancing. Are these people implied to be happily benefiting from AI? Who can say? It then cuts to someone scrolling Facebook, the Instagram logo, and a WhatsApp chat. All of those apps have been flooded with AI features over the last year, but none are visible in the video. The company's communication team describes the campaign as beginning to articulate Meta's optimistic vision for a future with AI, which seems like something that should have been figured out before investing many billions of dollars into building AI. There's a brief moment where the video cuts to the words MuseSpark, Meta's latest AI model on a laptop screen. And a moment later, the Meta AI interface appears, but there's no indication of what these tools can actually do, or why they should be relevant to anyone watching. Just that they are available to everyone, I guess. Some people will have you believe AI will make us less connected, that it's going to leave us behind, the video states, continuing with, we couldn't disagree more.
Okay. It wouldn't be the first time Zuckerberg has been vague about the future of AI. He now talks about AI with the same incomprehensible enthusiasm he once had for the metaverse. The thing he once predicted was going to be the successor of the mobile internet. We all know how that ended. The final 15 seconds of the video prominently feature Meta's smart glasses, including its new Kylie Jenner branded frames. There are a few shots of POV footage captured from Oakley Meta glasses, but again, no reference to AI.