Meta’s second-quarter earnings reveal that artificial intelligence is playing a growing role in keeping users engaged across its platforms, despite broader concerns about the quality of AI-generated content. On the company’s Q2 earnings call, CEO Mark Zuckerberg highlighted recent improvements to Meta’s recommendation systems, which he said have contributed directly to increased usage.
According to Zuckerberg, enhancements in AI-driven content suggestions led to a 5% uptick in time spent on Facebook and a 6% rise on Instagram during the quarter. These gains come amid a broader conversation around “AI slop,” a term used to describe the perceived surge in low-quality, algorithmically generated posts. Nevertheless, Meta argues that its systems are becoming better at filtering for relevance and user interest, and has actively attempted to target this “slop” content on various levels.
Beyond individual platforms, Meta reported that 3.4 billion people used at least one of its services – Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Messenger – on a daily basis in June, a 6% increase from the same period last year. This growth helped push total revenue for Meta’s family of apps to $47.1 billion for the quarter, representing a 22% year-over-year jump.
Video engagement continues to be a focus area. The company noted that time spent on video content grew 20% compared to the previous year, a trend Meta attributes to ongoing improvements in content ranking and efforts to highlight original material, particularly on Instagram.
Threads, Meta’s competitor to X (formerly Twitter), is also reportedly benefiting from backend integration of large language models (LLMs), which are helping drive more user engagement. The continued rollout of AI-powered tools appears to be a central part of Meta’s growth strategy, even as public scrutiny over generative content increases.
