AI is making you spend more time watching Instagram Reels, reveals Mark Zuckerberg
If you’ve been spending more time lately watching Instagram Reels, AI could be to blame.
On an earnings call on Wednesday, Zuckerberg said that time spent on Instagram had risen by 24% since the company launched its short-form video product Reels.
The CEO of Meta attributed this increase to AI investments that helped to push Reels videos to users.
‘Reels also continue to become more social with people resharing Reels more than 2 billion times every day, doubling over the last six months,’ said Zuckerberg on the call.
The American tech giant said that its AI work powers its recommendations and ranking infrastructure that powers all of its products, from feeds, Reels and ads.
‘Along with surfacing content from friends and family, now more than 20% of content in your Facebook and Instagram feeds are recommended by AI from people, groups, or accounts that you don’t follow,’ said Zuckerberg.
‘Across all of Instagram, that’s about 40% of the content that you see. Since we launched Reels, AI recommendations have driven a more than 24% increase in time spent on Instagram,’
Meta’s AI work has also improved Reels monetization taking it up over 30% on Instagram and over 40% on Facebook from last quarter.
The company also said that it was working on new generative AI models that are enabling an ‘entirely new classes of products and experiences’.
Zuckerberg went on to highlight that the company would continue to focus on building AI and metaverse offerings for the future.
‘I’m excited to bring new AI experiences to all of you soon, as well as launching the next generation Quest headset later this year,’ said Zuckerberg in a Facebook post on Wednesday.
In March, the company said that it would cut 10,000 jobs this year after firing 11,000 employees across Facebook and Instagram in November.
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