Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg credited AI with driving up the time users spent on the company’s apps in the second quarter. While consumers are increasingly complaining about the prevalence of “AI slop” — or low-quality AI-generated content flooding social apps — Meta says that AI systems are getting better at helping users connect with recommended content.
“AI is significantly improving our ability to show people content that they’re going to find interesting and useful,” Zuckerberg told investors on the Q2 earnings call. “Advancements in our recommendation systems have improved quality so much that it has led to a 5% increase in time spent on Facebook and 6% on Instagram just this quarter.”
Overall, Meta estimated that over 3.4 billion people used one of its “family of apps” — meaning Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and/or WhatsApp — on a daily basis in June. That figure is up 6% year-over-year and helped drive the total family of apps revenue to $47.1 billion, up 22% year-over-year.
The company additionally shared that video time spent increased 20% year-over-year in the quarter, also due to optimizations of Meta’s ranking systems and its work to promote more original content on Instagram.
Meta’s X competitor, Threads, was also seeing time spent gains due to the “incorporation of LLMs,” Meta noted.
