Image: Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg is back in the spotlight after a new interview where he spoke about AI, its effect on social media thus far, and its potential to spark a massive shift in the future of online advertising.
Meta, one of the top AI companies today, has been experimenting with AI on Facebook for several years. In late 2023, Meta introduced several new features for its advertisers — including the ability to create backgrounds, adjust images, and generate text variations — all with the help of AI. However, that only marked the beginning of Facebook’s AI integration.
Up until now, Facebook’s AI functionality has primarily focused on improving ad targeting; in a recent interview, Zuckerberg discussed the idea of using AI to generate ads from scratch. Not only that, but Zuckerberg wants advertisers to pay his team to generate AI ads on their behalf.
“We’re going to get to a point where you’re a business, you come to us, you tell us what your objective is, you connect to your bank account, you don’t need any creative, you don’t need any targeting demographic, you don’t need any measurement, except to be able to read the results that we spit out,” Zuckerberg said in his latest interview.
The future of online advertising
Zuckerberg and the teams at Meta and Facebook have expressed optimism about the future of AI in online advertising and AI in social media. After all, Meta reported $42.3 billion in revenue for the first quarter of 2025; a large portion of which came from selling ads on its popular social media platforms.
Others are less enthusiastic. Concerns are mounting over the rapid adoption of generative AI tools, and some interpret Zuckerberg’s remarks as a hostile and aggressive act that is meant to undermine the entire online ad ecosystem.
“I’ve been calling this swirl of ideas for AI-powered advertising ‘infinite creative,’ and we’ve seen some interesting demos of it in the past, including at NVIDIA keynotes. But I’ve never heard anyone pull the thread all the way to ‘connect us to your bank account and read the results we spit out,’ which would basically wipe out the entire ad industry as we know it,” said Nilay Patel with The Verge.
AI-generated ads are here to stay
Today’s advertisers aren’t shy about using AI to brainstorm ideas, generate video scripts, and create advertising campaigns, but it’s easy to see why some might scoff at Zuckerberg’s latest comments. Whether or not they’re ready to hand over the reins of their marketing strategy to Meta remains to be seen. One thing is certain: AI-generated ads are no longer a future concept — it’s already reshaping the industry.