Соцсети без людей: Марк Цукерберг ставит всё на ИИ-контент

It seems Mark Zuckerberg has finally put away his VR glasses with legs that never learned to walk through the metaverse. Now he has a new passion, and its name is generative AI. During his latest call with investors, the head of Meta directly stated that we are on the threshold of the greatest shift in how people consume digital content. If previously we went to social networks to see what a former classmate had for breakfast or which meme a colleague reposted, soon we will watch what a neural network created specifically for our pleasure. And this is not just another algorithm update, but an attempt to completely reinvent the very concept of sociality on the internet.

Remember how Facebook changed over the past twenty years. First it was just text, then photos appeared, and when mobile internet became fast enough, the era of video began. Zuckerberg sees a clear progression in this: each successive format became increasingly immersive and required less effort from the user to engage. AI looks like the logical conclusion of this evolution. Why wait for one of your friends to shoot an interesting video when a powerful server in Meta's data center can generate the perfect video, taking into account your current preferences, stress level, and even time of day? Content becomes endless and perfectly tailored to the viewer.

This strategy looks like an admission of partial defeat against TikTok, but with an attempt to take revenge at the next technological turn. Meta spent a long and painful time trying to catch up with the Chinese service with its magical recommendations, creating Reels and redesigning interfaces. Now Zuckerberg wants to go further. He says that today's apps are simply algorithms that recommend already existing content. In his new vision of the future, content is not simply recommended, it is born at the moment of request. This transforms a social network from a platform for information exchange into a personal entertainment bubble, where you are the only viewer and the main character at the same time.

From a technical standpoint, Meta has all the cards in hand to implement this. The Llama family of models is already breathing down the neck of market leaders, and the NVIDIA graphics card reserves at the company's disposal make even OpenAI jealous. But behind the technological glitter lurks a frightening prospect.

If the feed becomes completely synthetic, what will remain of that very social part that was once the foundation of the company? We're already complaining about filter bubbles and social fragmentation, but AI generation will raise these walls to the heavens. Each of us risks ending up locked in our own ideal, but absolutely fake digital reality, where there is no place for someone else's opinion or accidental discovery.

Zuckerberg's business logic, however, is flawless: engagement is the new oil. If AI-generated content makes a user spend ten minutes more on Instagram, it will bring billions in additional advertising revenue. Investors are delighted, stocks are rising, and Mark looks like a visionary again, not a guy who spent tens of billions of dollars on empty virtual rooms. However, the question remains open: will we want to return to a world where everything — from text to video — is created by a machine solely to keep us in the app as long as possible?

The transition to AI-centric social networks is also a huge risk for current content creators. If an algorithm can generate memes, write deep texts, and draw photorealistic pictures on its own, why would it pay bloggers or share reach with them? Meta is essentially building a system that in the long run could destroy the very ecosystem of influencers that it grew on. But it seems Zuckerberg is not too worried about this. He has always preferred to own the entire vertical, and now he wants to own not only the platform, but the very meaning transmitted through it.

Bottom line: social networks in their classical sense are dying, giving way to generative media. Will Meta be able to convince us that communicating with an algorithm is better than with real people, or will this mark the beginning of the end of Zuckerberg's empire?