What to know

  • Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed the company will offer both free, ad-supported AI tools and premium subscription services for users needing more computing power.
  • Meta has introduced a dedicated mobile app for its AI assistant with advanced features and plans to integrate it with AI glasses later this year.
  • The company will trial a paid subscription tier for premium features in the coming quarter while maintaining its commitment to serving as many people as possible.

Meta is taking a two-pronged approach to its AI offerings, according to CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The company plans to provide both free AI tools supported by advertisements and premium, high-power AI services for users willing to pay.

"I'm sure we'll end up having a premium service. But I think our basic values on this are that we want to serve as many people in the world as possible," Zuckerberg stated.

The announcement came just before Meta's first-quarter earnings release on Wednesday, April 30, 2025. Wall Street analysts projected Meta would report revenue of $41.39 billion for the quarter, up from $36.45 billion in the same period last year.

Meta recently held its inaugural Gen-AI developer conference, LlamaCon, where it launched Meta AI, an assistant that could rival ChatGPT. The company has already introduced a dedicated mobile app for this AI assistant featuring advanced reasoning capabilities, multilingual support, and personalized interactions based on users' Facebook and Instagram profiles.

The app includes a "discover" feed showcasing community queries and a voice-mode interface designed for natural dialogue. Meta plans to integrate the assistant with its AI glasses and companion software later this year and will trial a paid subscription tier for premium features in the coming quarter.

At LlamaCon, Meta also previewed its Llama API, inviting partners to join a limited-preview waitlist. This cloud-based access to the Llama model family will allow companies to integrate advanced language and multimodal capabilities into custom applications.

This marks a shift from Meta's previous model-download strategy that has driven over 1.2 billion Llama downloads to date. By offering it as a managed service, Meta aims to lower technical barriers for developers while maintaining its commitment to an open-source approach.

Despite these new developments, Meta's stock has been down 7.48% so far in 2025, though it remains up 28.89% over the past 12 months.

Via: The Verge