Bangalore, India, March 1st, 2023 :
As the competition for artificial intelligence (AI) among Big Tech companies heats up, Meta
Platforms Inc.’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, announced on Monday that the company
is forming a new top-level product division with a focus on generative AI.
While the tech sector struggles with sluggish growth, cuts thousands of employees, and dials
down on experimental bets to weather the slump, AI has emerged as a promising area for
investment.
In an Instagram post, Zuckerberg said, “We’re starting by pulling together a lot of the teams
working on generative AI across the company into one group focused on building delightful
experiences around this technology.”
He added, “Over the longer term, we’ll focus on developing AI personas that can help people
in a variety of ways,” but for now “we’re exploring experiences with text (chat in WhatsApp
and Messenger), with images (creative Instagram filters and ad formats), and with video and
multi-modal experiences.”
According to a corporate representative, Ahmad Al-Dahle will serve as the team’s leader and
will answer Chris Cox, Meta’s chief product officer. According to the spokesman, this will
allow Meta to incorporate the research team’s findings more quickly into its products.
The public battle to dominate the AI technology space kicked off late last year with the
launch of Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which has since prompted tech
heavyweights from around the world to announce their own offerings.
Last week, Facebook-parent Meta said it was releasing a new large language model LLaMA,
the core software of a new AI system, which would be available under non-commercial
license to researchers and entities affiliated with the government, civil society, and academia.
This comes in amongst the announcement of Meta progressing into the Virtual Reality world
with “direct touch” that lets one interact in VR and mixed reality with hand gestures, in a
“more natural” way.
Source: The Indian Express
