The generative AI gold rush is underway — just don’t expect it to create profits anytime soon. That was the message from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to investors during Wednesday’s call for the company’s first-quarter earnings report. Having just put its ChatGPT competitor in a bunch of places across Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp, much of the call focused on exactly how generative AI will become a money-making endeavor for Meta. The company is already quite profitable, having grown net income to more than $12 billion on $36.5 billion in revenue in the last quarter alone. But its revenue growth is expected to slow going forward. At the same time, it’s spending more than ever on AI and the metaverse. “Historically, investing to build these new scaled experiences in our apps has been a very good long-term investment for us and for investors who have stuck with us,” Zuckerberg said on the first quarter earnings call, drawing an analogy to the rollouts of Stories and Reels. “And the initial signs are quite positive here, too. But building the leading AI will also be a larger undertaking than the other experiences we’ve added to our apps, and this is likely going to take several years.” He said that the Meta AI assistant has been “tried” by “tens of millions of people” since it was made widely available last week, though that’s to be expected given how prominently it’s now featured in areas like the Instagram search box. The real test will be whether Meta AI becomes a product that people come back to often and if lots of people want to use an AI assistant in social media apps.

Full report : Mark Zuckerberg says “tens of millions of people” have “tried” Meta AI but making money from generative AI in Meta’s apps is likely going to take several years.