Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg (pictured) used its Q1 earnings call to outline a plan to enable AI across all its products and services, but cautioned it could take time for the move to boost its bottom line.

The Meta Platforms chatbot assistant powered by its latest Llama 3 Large Language Model is set to be embedded across its WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook services.

Zuckerberg said the company believes the bot is “now the most intelligent AI assistant that you can freely use”.

In addition to using it to handle queries, Zuckerberg believes the AI could be used to provide services enabling content creators and users to engage with each other, for customer support, purchases and internal coding.

Zuckerberg views the results achieved so far “as another key milestone in showing that we have the talent, data and ability to scale infrastructure to build the world’s leading AI model and services,” which leads him to believe the company “should invest significantly more over the coming years to build even more advanced models and the largest scale” services in the world.

He noted it could take several years before Meta Platforms reaps the rewards of its AI investments.

“On the upside, once our new AI services reach scale, we have a strong track record of monetising them”.

Paying the price
Meta Platforms also remains focused on expanding the metaverse, though its Reality Labs unit stayed in the red during Q1 with a loss of $3.8 billion, down from $3.9 billion in the comparable period of 2023.

The unit’s revenue rose 30 per cent to $440 million.

Overall revenue of $36.4 billion was up 27 per cent, while net income increased 117 per cent to $12.3 billion.

CFO Susan Li said advertising revenue increased 27 per cent to $35.6 billion, driven in part by a 20 per cent increase in the total number of impressions served.

Zuckerberg said Meta Platforms estimates more than 3.2 billion people use at least one of its apps each day and it is seeing healthy growth in the US.