Over the rest of this year, we’re going to start getting a real sense of the demand, but while that’s going on, the glasses keep getting better because of over-the-air AI updates. So, even though we keep shipping new frames and they’re adding more transition lenses because people want to wear them indoors, the hardware doesn’t necessarily change. And that’s an interesting thing because sunglasses are a little more discretionary, so I think a lot more people early on were thinking, “Hey, I’ll experiment with this with sunglasses. I’m not going to make these my primary glasses.” Now, we’re seeing a lot more people say, “Hey, this is actually really useful. I want to be able to wear them inside. I want them to be my primary glasses.”
So, whether that’s working with them through the optical channel or the transitions, that’s an important part, but the AI part of this also just keeps getting better. We talked about it at Connect: the ability to have, over the next few months when we roll this out, real-time translations. You’re traveling abroad, someone’s speaking Spanish to you, you just get it translated into English in your ear. It will roll out to more and more languages over time. I think we’re starting with a few languages, and we’ll hit more over time.
I tried that. Well, actually, I didn’t try real-time translation, but I tried looking at a menu in French, and it translated it into English. And then, at the end, I was like, “What is the euro [price] in USD?” And it did that, too. I’m also starting to see the continuum of this to Orion in the sense of the utility aspects. You could say, “Look at this and remind me about it at 8PM tonight,” and then it syncs with the companion app.
Yeah, Reminders are a new thing.
It’s not replacing the phone, but it’s augmenting what I would do with my phone. And I’m wondering if the [AI] app is a place for more of that kind of interaction as well. How are these glasses going to be more deeply tied to Meta AI over time? It seems like they’re getting closer and closer all the time.
Well, I think Meta AI is becoming a more and more prominent feature of the glasses, and there’s more stuff that you can do. You just mentioned Reminders, which is another example. Now, that is just going to work, and now your glasses can remind you of things.
Or you can look at a phone number and say, “Call this phone number,” and then it calls on the phone.
Yeah, we’ll add more capabilities over time, and some of those are model updates. Okay, now it has Llama 3.2, but some of it is software development around it. Reminders you don’t get for free just because we updated the model. We have this big software development effort, and we’re adding features continuously and developing the ecosystem, so you get more apps like Spotify, and all these different things can work more natively.
So the glasses just get more and more useful, which I think is also going to increase demand over time. And how does it interact with phones? Like you said, I don’t think people are getting rid of phones anytime soon. The way I think about this is that when phones became the primary computing platform, we didn’t get rid of computers. We just kind of shifted. I don’t know if you had this experience, but at some point in the early 2010s, I noticed that I’d be sitting at my desk in front of my computer, and I’d just pull out my phone to do things.
It’s not like we’re going to throw away our phones, but I think what’s going to happen is that, slowly, we’re just going to start doing more things with our glasses and leaving our phones in our pockets more. It’s not like we’re done with our computers, and I don’t think we’re going to be done with our phones for a while, but there’s a pretty clear path where you’re just going to use your glasses for more and more things. Over time, I think the glasses are also going to be able to be powered by wrist-based wearables or other wearables.
So, you’re going to wake up one day 10 years from now, and you’re not even going to need to bring your phone with you. Now, you’re still going to have a phone, but I think more of the time, people are going to leave it in their pocket or leave it in their bag, or eventually, some of the time, leave it at home. I think there will be this gradual shift to glasses becoming the main way we do computing.
It’s interesting that we’re talking about this right now, because I feel like phones are becoming kind of boring and stale. I was just looking at the new iPhone, and it’s basically the same as the year before. People are doing foldables, but it feels like people have run out of ideas on phones and that they’re kind of at their natural end state. When you see something like the Ray-Bans and how people have gravitated to them in a way that’s surprised you, and I think surprised all of us, I wonder if it’s also just that people want to interact with technology in different ways now.
Like you said at the beginning, the way that AI has intersected with this is kind of an “aha” thing for people that, honestly, for me, I didn’t expect it to click as quickly as it did. But when I got whitelisted for the AI, I was walking around in my backyard and using it, and I was like, “Oh, it’s obvious now where this is going. It feels like things are finally in a place where you can see where it’s going. Whereas before, it’s been a lot of R&D and talking about it, but the Ray-Bans are kind of a signifier of that, and I’m wondering if you agree.
I agree. I still think it’s early. You really want to be able to not only ask the AI questions but also ask it to do things and know that it’s going to reliably go do it. We’re starting with simple things, so voice control of your glasses, although you can do that on phones, too, and things like reminders, although you can generally do that on phones, too. But as the model capabilities grow over the next couple of generations and you get more of what people call these agentic capabilities, it’s going to start to get pretty exciting.
For what it’s worth, I also think that all the AI work is going to make phones a lot more exciting. The most exciting thing that has happened to our family of apps roadmap in a long time is all the different AI things that we’re building. If I were at any of the other companies trying to design what the next few versions of iPhone or Google’s phones should be, I think that there’s a long and interesting roadmap of things that they can do with AI that, as an app developer, we can’t. That’s a pretty exciting and interesting thing for them to do, which I assume they will.
On the AI social media piece, one of the wilder things that your team told me you’re going to start doing is showing people AI-generated imagery personalized to them, in feed. I think it’s starting as an experiment, but if you’re a photographer, you would see Meta AI generating content that’s personalized for you, alongside content from the people you follow.
It’s this idea that I’ve been thinking about, of AI invading social media, so to speak — maybe you don’t like the word “invading,” but you know what I mean — and what that does to how we relate to each other as humans. In your view, how much AI stuff and AI-generated stuff is going to be filling feeds in the near future?
Here’s how I come at this: in the history of running the company — and we’ve been building these apps for 20 years — every three to five years, there’s some new major format that comes along that is typically additive to the experience. So, initially, people updated their profiles; then they were able to post statuses that were texts; then links; then you got photos early on; then you added videos; then mobile. Basically Snap invented stories, the first version of that, and that became a pretty widely used format. The whole version of shortform videos, I think, is still an ascendant format.
You keep on making the system richer by having more types of content that people can share and different ways to express themselves. When you look out over the next 10 years of, “This trend seems to happen where every three to five years, there are new formats,” I think you’d bet that that continues or accelerates given the pace of change in the tech industry. And I think you’d bet that probably most of the new formats are going to be AI-connected in some way given that that’s the driving theme for the industry at this point.
Given that set of assumptions, we’re trying to understand what things are most useful to people within that. There’s one vein of this, which is helping people and creators make better content using AI. So that is going to be pretty clear. Just make it super easy for aspiring creators or advanced creators to make much better stuff than they would be able to otherwise. That can take the format of like, “All right, my daughter is writing a book and she wants it illustrated, and we sit down together and work with Meta AI and Imagine to help her come up with images to illustrate it.” That’s a thing that’s like, she didn’t have the capability to do that before. She’s not a graphic designer, but now she has that ability. I think that that’s going to be pretty cool.
Then there’s a version where you have this great diversity of AI agents that are part of this system. And this, I think, is a big difference between our vision of AI and most of the other companies. Yeah, we’re building Meta AI as the main assistant that you can build. That’s sort of equivalent to the singular assistant that may be like what Google or an OpenAI or different folks are building, but it’s not really the main thing that we’re doing. Our main vision is that we think that there are going to be a lot of these. It’s every business, all the hundreds of millions of small businesses, just like they have a website and an email address and a social media account today, I think that they’re all going to have an AI that helps them interact with their customers in the future, that does some combination of sales and customer support and all of that.
I think all the creators are basically going to want some version of this that basically helps them interact with their community when they’re just limited by not having enough hours in the day to interact with all the messages that are coming in, and they want to make sure that they can show some love to people in their community. Those are just the two most obvious ones that even if we just did those, that’s many hundreds of millions, but then there’s going to be all this more creative [user-generated content] that people create that are kind of wilder use cases. And our view is, “Okay, these are all going to live across these social networks and beyond.” I don’t think that they should be constrained to waiting until someone messages them.
I think that they’re going to have their own profiles. They’re going to be creating content. People will be able to follow them if they want. You’ll be able to comment on their stuff. They may be able to comment on your stuff if you’re connected with them, and there will obviously be different logic and rules, but that’s one way that there’s going to be a lot more AI participants in the broader social construct. Then you get to the test that you mentioned, which is maybe the most abstract, which is just having the central Meta AI system directly generate content for you based on what we think is going to be interesting to you and putting that in your feed.
On that, I think there’s been this trend over time where the feeds started off as primarily and exclusively content for people you followed, your friends. I guess it was friends early on, then it kind of broadened out to, “Okay, you followed a set of friends and creators.” And then it got to a point where the algorithm was good enough where we’re actually showing you a lot of stuff that you’re not following directly because, in some ways, that’s a better way to show you more interesting stuff than only constraining it to things that you’ve chosen to follow.
I think the next logical jump on that is like, “Okay, we’re showing you content from your friends and creators that you’re following and creators that you’re not following that are generating interesting things. And you just add on to that, a layer of, “Okay, and we’re also going to show you content that’s generated by an AI system that might be something that you’re interested in.” Now, how big do any of these segments get? I think it’s really hard to know until you build them out over time, but it feels like it is a category in the world that’s going to exist, and how big it gets is kind of dependent on the execution and how good it is.
Why do you think it needs to exist as a new category? I’m still wrestling with why people want this. I get the companionship stuff that Character.AI and some startups have already shown there’s a market for. And you’ve talked about how Meta AI is already being used for roleplaying. But the big idea is that AI has been used to intermediate and feed how humans reach each other. And now, all of a sudden, AIs are going to be in feeds with us, and that feels big.
But in a lot of ways, the big change already happened, which is people getting content that they weren’t following. And the definition of feeds and social interaction has changed very fundamentally in the last 10 years. Now, in social systems, most of the direct interaction is happening in more private forums, in messaging or groups.
This is one of the reasons we were late with Reels initially to compete with TikTok is because we hadn’t made this mental shift where we kind of felt like, “No, the feed is where you interact with people.” Actually, increasingly, the feed is becoming a place where you discover content that you then take to your private forums and interact with people there. It’s like, I’ll still have the thing where a friend will post something and I’ll comment on it and engage directly in feed. Again, this is additive. You’re adding more over time. But the main way that you engage with Reels isn’t necessarily that you go into the Reels comments and comment and talk to people you don’t know. It’s like you see something funny and you send it to friends in a group chat.
I think that paradigm will absolutely continue with AI and all kinds of interesting content. So it is facilitating connections with people, but already, we’re in this mode where our connections through social media are shifting to more private places, and the role of the feed in the ecosystem is more of what I’d call a discovery engine of content: icebreakers or interesting topic starters for the conversations that you’re having across this broader spectrum of places where you’re interacting.
Do you worry that interacting with AIs like this will make people less likely to talk to other people, that it will reduce the engagement that we have with humans?
The sociology that I’ve seen on this is that most people have way fewer friends physically than they would like to have. People cherish the human connections that they have, and the more we can do to make that feel more real and give you more reasons to connect, whether it’s through something funny that shows up so you can message someone or a pair of glasses that lets your sister show up as a hologram in your living room when she lives across the country and you wouldn’t be able to see her otherwise, that’s always our main bread and butter in the thing that we’re doing.
But in addition to that, the average person, maybe they’d like to have 10 friends, and there’s the stat that — it’s sort of sad — the average American feels like they have fewer than three real close friends. So does this take away from that? My guess is no. I think that what’s going to happen is it’s going to help give people more of the support that they need and give people more reasons and the ability to connect with either a broader range of people or more deeply with the people they care about.
How are you feeling about how Threads is doing these days?
Threads is on fire. It’s great. There’s only so quickly that something can get to 1 billion people, so we’ll keep pushing on it.
I’ve heard it’s still using Instagram a lot for growth. I’m wondering, when do you see it getting to a standalone growth driver on its own?
I think that these things all connect to each other. Threads helps Instagram, and Instagram helps threads. I don’t know that we have some strategic goal, which is to make it so that Threads is completely disconnected from Instagram or Facebook. I actually think we’re going in the other direction. It started off just connected to Instagram, and now we also connected it so that the content can show up [elsewhere].
Taking a step back, we just talked about how most people are interacting in more private forums. If you’re a creator, what you want to do is have your content show up everywhere because you’re trying to build the biggest community that you can in these different places. So it’s this huge value for people if they can generate a reel or a video or some text-based content. Now, you can post it on Threads, Instagram, Facebook, and more places over time. The direction there is generally more flow, not less, and more interoperability. And that’s why I’ve been pushing on that as a theme over time.
I’m not even sure what X is anymore, but I think what it used to be, what Twitter used to be, was a place where you went when news was happening. I know you, and the company, seem to be distancing yourself from recommending news. But with Threads, it feels like that’s what people want and what people thought Threads might be, but it seems like you are intentionally saying, “We don’t want Threads to be that.”
There are different ways to look at this. I always looked at Twitter not as primarily about real-time news but as a shortform, primarily text discussion-oriented app. To me, the fundamental defining aspect of that format is that when you make a post, the comments aren’t subordinate to the post. The comments are kind of at a peer level.
That is a very different architecture than every other type of social network that’s out there. And it’s a subtle difference, but within these systems, these subtle differences lead to very different emerging behaviors. Because of that, people can take and fork discussions, and it makes it a very good discussion-oriented platform. News is one thing that people like discussing, but it’s not the only thing.
I always looked at Twitter, and I was like, “Hey, this is such a wasted opportunity. This is clearly a billion-person app.” Maybe in the modern day, when you have many billions of people using social apps, it should be multiple billions of people. There were a lot of things that have been complicated about Twitter and the corporate structure and all of that, but for whatever reason, they just weren’t quite getting there. Eventually, I thought, “Hey, I think we can do this. I think we can get this, build out the discussion platform in a way that can get to a billion people and be more of a ubiquitous social platform that I think achieves its full potential.” But our version of this is that we want it to be a kinder place. We don’t want it to start with the direct head-to-head combat of news, and especially politics.
Do you feel like that constrains the growth of the product at all?
I think we’ll see. We’ll run the experiment.
That needs to exist in the world. Because I feel like with X’s seeming implosion, it doesn’t really exist anymore. Maybe I’m biased as someone in the media, but I do think when something big happens in the world, people want an app that they can go to and see everyone that they follow talking about it immediately. There’s not an immediacy [on Threads].
Well, we’re not the only company. There are a ton of different competitors and different companies doing things. I think that there’s a talented team over at X, so I wouldn’t write them off. And then obviously, there are all these other folks, and there are a lot of startups that are doing stuff. So I don’t feel like we have to go at that first. I think that maybe we get there over time, or maybe we decide that it’s enough of a zero-sum trade, or maybe even a negative-sum trade, where that use case should exist somewhere but maybe that use case prevents a lot more usage and a lot more value in other places because it makes it a somewhat less friendly place. I don’t think we know the answer to that yet. But I do think, the last 8–10 years of our experience has been that the political discourse is tricky.
On the one hand, it’s obviously a very important thing in society. On the other hand, I don’t think it leaves people feeling good. I’m torn between these two values. I think people should be able to have this kind of open discourse, and that’s good. But I don’t want to design a product that makes people angry. There’s an informational lens for looking at this, and then there’s “you’re designing a product, and what’s the feel of the product?” I think anyone who’s designing a product cares a lot about how the thing feels.
But you recognize the importance of that discussion happening.
I think it’s useful. And look, we don’t block it. We just make it so that for the content where you’re following people, if you want to talk to your friends about it, if you want to talk to them about it in messaging, there can be groups about it. If you follow people, it can show up in your feed, but we don’t go out of our way to recommend that content when you are not following it. I think that has been a healthy balance for us and for getting our products to generally feel the way that we want.
And culture changes over time. Maybe the stuff will be a little bit less polarized and anger-inducing at some point, and maybe it’ll be possible to have more of that while also, at the same time, having a product where we’re proud of how it feels. Until then, I think we want to design a product where people can get the things that they want, but fundamentally, I care a lot about how people feel coming away from the product.
Do you see this decision to downrank political content for people who aren’t being followed in feed as a political decision? Because you’re also, at the same time, not really saying much about the US presidential election this year. You’re not donating. You’ve said you want to stay out of it now.
And I see the way the company’s acting, and it reflects your personal way you’re operating right now. I’m wondering how much more of it is also what you and the company have gone through and the political environment, and not necessarily just what users are telling you.
Is there a throughline there?
I’m sure it’s all connected. In this case, it wasn’t a tradeoff between those two things because this actually was what our community was telling us. And people were saying, “Generally, we don’t want so much politics. We don’t feel good. We want more stuff from our friends and family. We want more stuff from our interests.” That was kind of the primary driver. But it’s definitely the case that our corporate experience on this shaped this.
I think there’s a big difference between something being political and being partisan. And the main thing that I care about is making sure that we can be seen as nonpartisan and be a trusted institution by as many people as possible, as much as something can be in the world in 2024. I think that the partisan politics is so tough in the world right now that I’ve made the decision that, for me and for the company, the best thing to do is to try to be as nonpartisan and neutral as possible in all of this and distance ourselves from it as much as possible. It’s not just the substance. I also think perception matters. Maybe it doesn’t matter on our platforms, whether I endorse a candidate or not, but I don’t want to go anywhere near that.
Sure, you could say that’s a political strategy, but for where we are in the world today, it’s very hard. Almost every institution has become partisan in some way, and we are just trying to resist that. And maybe I’m too naive, and maybe that’s impossible, but we’re going to try to do that.
On the Acquired podcast recently, you said that the political miscalculation was a 20-year mistake.
Yeah, from a brand perspective.
And you said it was going to take another 10 years or so for you to fully work through that cycle. What makes you think it’s such a lasting thing? Because you look at how you personally have evolved over the last couple of years, and I think perception of the company has evolved. I’m wondering what you meant by saying it’s going to take another 10 years.
I’m just talking about where our brand and our reputation are compared to where I think they would’ve been. Sure, maybe things have improved somewhat over the last few years. You can feel the trend, but it’s still significantly worse than it was in 2016. The internet industry overall, and I think our company, in particular, we’re seen way more positively.
Look, there were real issues. I think it’s always very difficult to talk about this stuff in a nuanced way because, to some degree, before 2016, everyone was sort of too rosy about the internet overall and didn’t talk enough about the issues. Then the pendulum swung and people only talked about the issues and didn’t talk about the stuff that was positive, and it was all there the whole time. When I talk about this, I don’t mean to come across as simplistic or—
Or that you guys didn’t do anything wrong or anything.
Or that there weren’t issues with the internet or things like that. Obviously, every year, whether it’s politics or other things, there are always things that you look back on and you’re like, “Hey, if I were playing this perfectly, I would’ve done these things differently.” But I do think it’s the case that I didn’t really know how to react to something as big of a shift in the world as what happened, and it took me a while to find my footing. I do think that it’s tricky when you’re caught up in these big debates and you’re not experienced or sophisticated and engaging with that. I think you can make some big missteps. I do think that some of the things that we were accused of over time, it’s been pretty clear at this point now that all the investigations have been done that they weren’t true.
