Six months into its big AI turnaround, Meta estimates that 2026 will be the year it begins to reap the rewards.
The tech giant has spent billions upon billions on meta-superintelligence labs, poaching top talent from the likes of OpenAI, Apple and more in hopes of revitalizing its failing AI initiatives.
The company hopes to demonstrate that it is finally reaping the rewards of that commitment with a number of new AI models and products that it will bring to market over the coming months, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during the company’s earnings conference call Wednesday. But maybe don’t expect anything revolutionary.
“I think this is going to be a long-term effort,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s a journey that we’re taking, and the first set of things that we’ll release, I think, will be more about showing the trajectory that we’re on rather than being a single moment in time.”
Beyond model and product announcements, Meta hopes 2026 will be the year it can use AI to make its existing offerings even more tailored to your needs. To the average user, it will look like an Instagram feed of oddly targeted content, thanks to an LLM-enhanced recommendation system that can understand “people’s unique personal goals” and tailor ads and feeds accordingly.
“Today, our apps are like algorithms that recommend content,” Zuckerberg said. “Soon you will open our apps and you will have an AI that understands you and is also able to show you great content or even generate great personalized content for you.”
These recommendation models will leverage the world knowledge and reasoning skills of LLMs to better guess the content you want. Susan Li, Meta’s chief financial officer, said this would be particularly useful for content published more recently and which has less engagement data on which to base recommendations.
As of last month, the company officially began using AI chat history to serve hyper-targeted ads and posts across all platforms except the European Union, where it is forced to deploy less personalized ads due to strict consumer protections.
In addition to advancing the algorithm, AI is already “driving additional time spent on Instagram,” Li said, thanks to AI-dubbed videos in local languages.
“Hundreds of millions of people watch AI-translated videos every day,” Li said.
This personalization effort will also be reflected in Meta AI offerings. The more personalized the responses, the more engaged the user is with the AI, Li said. But that may not always be a good thing.
OpenAI has spent the past few months under intense scrutiny and facing some legal repercussions after addictive AI chatbot designs were found to inherently carry risks, particularly to the mental health of vulnerable users like children and adolescents.
Meta already doesn’t have a good track record when it comes to AI security guardrails for vulnerable populationsand especially for children. The company faced regulatory scrutiny after a Reuters report this summer revealed that Meta allowed its chatbots to engage in “sensual” conversations with minors.
During the earnings call, Meta executives said the company could suffer significant losses this year due to “scrutiny of youth-related issues.”
Zuck’s quest for an “immersive” digital experience
The AI-enhanced feed is just a continuation of Zuckerberg’s long-held vision for a more “immersive and interactive” digital experience. It’s the same vision that drove his huge investment and corporate shift to the Metaverse, a company that has now accumulated approximately $80 billion in total operating losses.
According to Zuckerberg, we’ve seen online content evolve from text to photo to video, but it hasn’t reached its final frontier.
“Soon we will see an explosion of new media formats that are more immersive and interactive and only possible through advances in AI,” Zuckerberg said on the call. “Our feeds will become more interactive overall.”
While he previously thought virtual reality office spaces were how this would materialize, it appears Zuckerberg has now turned his attention to artificial intelligence and wearable devices.
Earlier this month, Meta laid off 1,500 people in its Metaverse division as part of a move to shift investment from virtual reality to wearable devices, like smart glasses.
“Glasses are the ultimate embodiment of that vision. They will be able to see what you see, hear what you hear, talk to you, and help you throughout your day,” Zuckerberg said. He even compared smart glasses to smartphones.
“I think we’re in a time similar to when smartphones were coming, and it was clearly just a matter of time before all these flip phones became smartphones,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s hard to imagine a world a few years from now where most of the glasses people wear aren’t AI glasses.”
