Meta starts generative AI features for advertisers

Meta announced today it’s rolling out its first generative AI features for advertisers, allowing them to use AI to create backgrounds, expand images and generate multiple versions of ad text based on their original copy.

The launch of the new tools follows the company’s Meta Connect event last week where the social media giant debuted its Quest 3 mixed-reality headset and a host of other generative AI products, including stickers and editing tools, as well as AI-powered smart glasses.

Generative AI focuses on creating new and original content, chat responses, designs, synthetic data or even deepfakes. It’s particularly valuable in creative fields and for novel problem-solving, as it can autonomously generate many types of new outputs.

The rollout marks the Facebook and Instagram owner’s first foray into bundling generative AI technology into its products for mining vast stores of past data to generate new content like prose, art and software code.

Last week, the company said businesses will soon be able to use AI for business messaging on Messenger and WhatsApp to engage with customers.

Meta’s portfolio of AI products includes its language model “Llama 2” and an AI chatbot called Meta AI that can generate text responses and photo-realistic images.