Your screentime on Instagram is growing, thanks to Meta's AI push

CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that global time spent on Instagram grew by double digits year over year this quarter. Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Meta said that time spent on Instagram grew by double digits year over year this quarter.

Zuckerberg said that Instagram recommendations are "becoming more personalized" because of AI.

Zuckerberg called feeding public content to AI "a key building block" toward personalization.

If you can't seem to get off your Instagram scroll, it is not an accident.

During Meta's second-quarter earnings call on Wednesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that global time spent on Instagram grew by double digits year over year this quarter, "largely driven by improvements to our feed and Reels recommendations."

"Our recommendations are also becoming more personalized, surfacing more fresh content while giving people more direct control over what they see," Zuckerberg said, adding that Instagram reels combined "faster inference with a new architecture that draws on deeper user history to improve predictions."

"This drove a 15 basis point increase in sessions on Instagram, with particular strength in reshares and time spent, which are both strong indicators of better content-to-user matching," Zuckerberg added.

According to Zuckerberg, recommendations are trained through automatically feeding every public Reel and post on Instagram to an LLM and analyzing them for topics and tone, which he called "a key building block toward greater personalization."

"And we're working towards including more surfaces on Facebook as well," Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg's comments came weeks after the company launched Muse Image in early July, which lets users create AI-generated images from photos on public Instagram accounts of people over 18. By default, eligible public accounts were included without prior notice, triggering a privacy backlash that led to the generation function being shut down in less than a week.

Users could prevent Meta's AI from accessing  visual content  by going to Instagram's Settings, opening the Share and Reuse section, and switching off the option that lets Meta access photos and videos. There was no such option for text, comments, or audio.

The algorithms have been central to multiple lawsuits filed by more than two dozen states that alleged that Meta designed its products to be addictive to teenagers and children.

During the call, Meta CFO Susan Li said the company expects continued "scrutiny on youth-related issues in several markets" and has "a number of youth-related trials scheduled for this year," which could result in financial losses. The company reported $2.40 billion of charges "related to legal proceedings."

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comments.

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