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Meta has tapped Salesforce AI CEO Clara Shih to lead a new organization that builds AI tools for businesses that use Meta apps to reach consumers, Meta said in a report. Share LinkedIn Who on Tuesday? Meta confirmed the appointment and the new Business AI group in a statement to TechCrunch.
“I am thrilled to announce today that I have joined Meta to lead a new Business AI group,” Shih said in a LinkedIn post. “Our vision for this new product range is to make cutting-edge AI accessible to every company, empowering everyone to succeed and own their future in the AI era.”
Meta has an unusual business model around AI, and claims to use an open source approach, but not how everyone defines it. Mark Zuckerberg’s company doesn’t sell a subscription to its chatbots, like OpenAI or Google, in order to generate revenue. Instead, Meta is betting that Llama’s large-language models will make its existing suite of applications much better. AI tools for businesses appear to be part of this effort.
Specifically, the new Meta suite will bring AI products made with Llama to millions of businesses that advertise and create content on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. It’s unclear exactly what kind of tools Meta could offer these people, but it seems likely that it will offer tools to create AI-generated ads. Meta has recently been pushing more AI-generated content to its social media feeds, including a Facebook carousel of AI-generated images, and AI chatbots that mimic content creators on Instagram.
This is a notable shift for Meta platforms, which previously only featured human-generated content. Providing tools for companies to create more ads cheaply could be very profitable for Meta. It is unclear whether Meta will sell these AI tools, or whether they will be offered for free as a way to increase ad spending – the company’s main source of revenue.
“We believe these recent advances in AI represent a significant opportunity for companies to achieve greater efficiencies and dramatically improve the experiences they provide to their customers,” said John Hegeman, Meta’s vice president and head of monetization, in an emailed statement to TechCrunch. “This new product portfolio under Clara’s leadership will help us realize this vision.”
Shih previously led Salesforce’s AI efforts, which had little success. in May, Salesforce shares fell by the most since 2008This is largely due to investor concerns that the giant company has missed the opportunity for the artificial intelligence boom. The giant company told investors at the time that it expected to achieve its slowest growth ever in the next quarter. Since then, Salesforce has moved aggressively into AI, launching an AI agent development platform called Agentforce. Even its CEO, Marc Benioff, has taken an offensive stance, publicly criticizing Microsoft’s AI efforts.
Salesforce did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment. It is not clear at this time who will take over Xie’s role there.
Now, it looks like Shih will have the opportunity to start something new at Meta, the company she wrote a book about in 2009 called “The Age of Facebook.”
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