The development of AI agents at Meta is proceeding more slowly than planned — Zuckerberg

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged that the company’s development of AI agents over the past four months has not “accelerated as [Meta] had previously expected.” He made this statement during an internal staff meeting; a recording of his remarks was obtained by Reuters.

In addition, the company’s CEO noted that Meta’s reorganization, which was accompanied by large-scale layoffs, did not go as smoothly as planned, and the changes to the new structure have not yet yielded results.

Zuckerberg expressed hope that the social media giant will begin to see a more significant return on its AI investments over the next three to six months.

A Meta spokesperson declined to comment on the company CEO's statements.

At the same meeting, according to Reuters, Meta’s Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth stated that the company’s controversial experiment involving the tracking of mouse movements, clicks, and keystrokes by employees to train AI had been discontinued—employee data had not been included in the training of AI models. The program was suspended last month due to an investigation into a leak of confidential data. Bosworth assured that if the experiment is resumed, employees will participate on a voluntary basis. In April, when the tracking program was first installed on Meta employees’ computers, it was impossible to opt out of the experiment, the agency reports.

Meta shares fell nearly 5% during trading on July 2; after the close of the main trading session in the U.S., they rose 0.34%.

This year, Meta plans to invest up to $145 billion in developing AI infrastructure. This represents a significant portion of the more than $700 billion that big tech companies collectively intend to spend on this technology, Reuters notes.

Earlier in June, Meta announced the launch of an AI agent for businesses that can be used on WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram to respond to customer inquiries, recommend products, and schedule appointments. A few days later, the Financial Times reported that Google had imposed limits on Meta’s use of its AI capabilities: according to the newspaper, Zuckerberg’s company had requested more computing power than Google was able to provide.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor