12,500 million euros. This is what Facebook swallowed in 2022 at its Reality Labs branch, in charge of developing its augmented and virtual reality technologies, and especially its metaverse. A strategy that, for the moment, is not paying off: despite the launch of new virtual reality headsets and its metaverse platform, Facebook has even seen its division’s turnover drop in more than a year. To reassure investors, Mark Zuckerberg is now talking mostly about artificial intelligence.
AI today, metaverse…later
On February 1, during discussions with financial analysts, the Facebook boss made comments that contrasted with the full confidence he had in his metaverse a few months ago. After a 60% drop in Facebook’s share price in 2022, its founder was called in to reassure investors, even if it meant navigating a new trend fueled by the success of tools like Dall-E or ChatGPT.
A contextualization that arises periodically, given many doubts about the viability of the metaverse project, which does not attract the general public. Last September, Facebook had thus evoked the horizon of a decade for its metaverse to show its full potential.
Another sign of this shift in discourse: the notion of a metaverse, discussed at the start of discussions with these same analysts a year ago, comes after mention of Facebook’s work on artificial intelligence this year. In 2022, the term “metaverse” was mentioned fifteen times, compared to just seven in 2023.
Compete with TikTok
According to Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook aims to use artificial intelligence tools to better compete with TikTok, thanks to a more specialized selection of videos to be streamed on Instagram, but also targeted ads across all of its platforms.
To better remember the order of his priorities, faced with dubious investors against the metaverse, Mark Zuckerberg also concluded his introductory speech with his company’s list of areas of work for 2023: artificial intelligence, advertising, messaging, artificial generative. intelligence, then metaverse. A choice that was probably not made by chance.
Source: BFM TV
