[bun_at_work]

Meta makes their money off advertising, which means they profit from attention.

This means they need content that will grab attention, and creating open source models that allow anyone to create any content on their own becomes good for Meta. The users of the models can post it to their Instagram/FB/Threads account.

Releasing an open model also releases Meta from the burden of having to police the content the model generates, once the open source community fine-tunes the models.

Overall, this move is good business move for Meta - the post doesn't really talk about the true benefit, instead moralizing about open source, but this is a sound business move for Meta.

[apwell23]

I am not sure I follow this.

1. Is there such a thing as 'attention grabbing AI content' ? Most AI content I see is the opposite of 'attention grabbing'. Kindle store is flooded with this garbage and none of it is particularly 'attention grabbing'.

2. Why would creation of such content, even if it was truly attention grabbing, benefit meta in particular ?

3. How would poliferation of AI content lead to more ad spend in the economy. Ad budgets won't increase because of AI content?

To me this is typical Zuckerberg play. Attach metas name to whatever is trendy at the moment like ( now forgotten) metaverse, cryptocoins and bunch of other failed stuff that was trendy for a second. Meta is NOT an Gen AI company ( or a metaverse company, or a cypto company) like he is scamming ( more like colluding) the market to believe. A mere distraction from slowing user growth on ALL of meta apps.

ppl seem to have just forgotten this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diem_(digital_currency)

[bun_at_work]

Sure - there is plenty of attention grabbing AI content - it doesn't have to grab _your_ attention, and it won't work for everyone. I have seen people engaging with apps that redo a selfie to look like a famous character or put the person in a movie scene, for example.

Every piece of content in any feed (good, bad, or otherwise) benefits the aggregator (Meta, YouTube, whatever), because someone will look at it. Not everything will go viral, but it doesn't matter. Scroll whatever on Twitter, YouTube Shorts, Reddit, etc. Meta has a massive presence in social media, so content being generated is shared there.

The more content of any type leads to more engagement on the platforms where it's being shared. Every Meta feed serves the viewer an ad (for which Meta is paid) every 3 or so posts (pieces of content). It doesn't matter if the user doesn't like 1/5 posts or whatever, the number of ads still goes up.

[apwell23]

> it doesn't have to grab _your_ attention

I am talking about in general, not me personally. No popular content on any website/platform is AI generated. Maybe you have examples that lead you believe that its possible on a mass scale.

> look like a famous character or put the person in a movie scene

what attention grabbing movie used gen ai persons

[_proofs]

i'd say reddit is a pretty great example, twitter, even instagram or facebook comments, where bot generated traffic and comments are a norm.

you have plenty of bot or "AI/LLM" generated content, that is consumed -- up to and including things like "news".

as for the comment about movies, i'm confused -- CGI has been a thing for a long time, and "AI" has been used to convey aging or how a person might look given some conditions, on screen, as well as a whole host of things.

while this might not be an LLM, it is certainly computer generated, predictive, and artificially generated.

[modo_mario]

I think the biggest part of it is just that they were behind but also betting on it. This allowed them to get a lot of traction, support and be a notable player in the race whilst still retaining some control. Chances are if someone is going to have a frontrow seat monetizing this it's still them.

[natural219]

AI moderators too would be an enormous boon if they could get that right.

[KaiserPro]

It would be good, but the cost per moderation is still really high for it to be practical.

[noiseinvacuum]

Creating content with AI will surely be helpful for social media to some extent but I think it's not that important in larger scheme of things, there's already a vast sea of content being created by humans and differentiation is already in recommending the right content to right people at right time.

More important is the products that Meta will be able to make if the industry standardizes on Llama. They would have the front seat in not just with access the latest unreleased models but also settings the direction of progress and next gen LLM optimizes for. If you're Twitter or Snap or TikTok or compete with Meta on the product then good luck in trying to keep up.

[visarga]

> Meta makes their money off advertising, which means they profit from attention. This means they need content that will grab attention

That is why they hopped on the Attention is All You Need train

[jklinger410]

This is a great point. Eventually, META will only allow LLAMA generated visual AI content on its platforms. They'll put a little key in the image that clears it with the platform.

Then all other visual AI content will be banned. If that is where legislation is heading.