iWorld
Meta Rolls out its first generative AI-powered ad features
Mumbai: Meta has announced that rolling out its first generative AI-powered features for ad creatives in Meta’s Ads Manager, with global rollout complete by next year. These unlock a new era of creativity that maximizes the productivity, personalization and performance for all advertisers. The new features – Background Generation, Image Expansion, and Text Variations – will add to the AI-powered experiences and tools Meta continues to build for businesses.
Background Generation: Creates multiple backgrounds to complement the advertiser’s product images, allowing advertisers to tailor their creative assets for different audiences.
Image Expansion: Seamlessly adjusts creative assets to fit different aspect ratios across multiple surfaces, like Feed or Reels, allowing advertisers to spend less time and resources on repurposing creative assets.
Text Variations: Generates multiple versions of ad texts based on advertiser’s original copy, highlighting the selling points of their products/services and giving them multiple text options to better reach their audience.
What Meta learned from advertisers
Earlier this year, Meta announced the AI Sandbox where they have been testing these generative AI features with a small and diverse set of advertisers. These advertisers have been providing Meta with valuable feedback, including helping it ensure these products are built responsibly. Here’s what they’ve said about Meta’s generative AI for ads:
Generative AI can save time and resources while spurring productivity – According to a survey of advertisers that participated in early testing, most advertisers expect saving time and half of them estimate that generative AI will save them five or more hours a week – the equivalent of one month per year – noting they’ll be able to create multiple asset variations with the click of a button, reducing time spent between creative and media teams on time-consuming editing tasks and allowing for more strategic work.1 Nearly all advertisers also agreed that the products being tested in AI Sandbox will eventually help marketers drive campaign performance by enabling quicker development of more ad creative variations at scale.
“As an early adopter of Meta’s AI Sandbox, Publicis is excited to experience how it will apply to important client use cases,“ said Publicis Media Content Innovation EVP – head of innovation Keith Soljacich. “Ad creative development that is faster, smarter and integrated into the larger Meta ad platform will be a game changer.”
Generative AI eases creative fatigue, but there is still room to customize – Creatives have a large impact on the performance of an ad,2 and yet advertisers find it challenging to identify the best-performing creative at scale. Generative AI enables advertisers to introduce new ad creative faster, yet there is still work to do on delivering outputs customized to every brand’s unique voice and visual style. Meta will need to define new ways of partnering with brands and agencies to help train these models on brands’ unique perspective.
What’s next
Meta’s generative AI investments are focused on helping marketers to do their best work, by allowing them to launch & test ad creatives faster and easily reach the audiences they care about.
Today’s generative-AI powered ad features are just a start. Meta plans to offer advertisers more ways to generate ad copy to highlight product selling points or generate background images in minutes with tailored themes, like outdoor images for an athleisure brand. And as Meta shared at Connect, businesses will soon be able to use AIs for business messaging on Messenger and WhatsApp to engage with customers – helping with commerce, engagement, and support, unlocking instant conversational responses. Meta is testing with a small number of businesses in Alpha and plans to scale it further next year.
With millions of businesses advertising on Meta’s platform, it will continue to take a collaborative approach in developing these features and experiences so that they provide value to businesses and people.
iWorld
Meta plans 8,000 layoffs in new AI-led restructuring wave
First phase from May 20 may cut 10 per cent workforce amid AI pivot.
MUMBAI: At Meta, the future may be artificial but the cuts are very real. The social media giant is reportedly preparing a fresh round of layoffs, with an initial wave expected to impact around 8,000 employees as it doubles down on its artificial intelligence ambitions. According to a Reuters report, the first phase of job cuts is slated to begin on May 20, targeting roughly 10 per cent of Meta’s global workforce. With nearly 79,000 employees on its rolls as of December 31, the move marks one of the company’s most significant workforce reductions in recent years.
And this may only be the beginning. Sources indicate that additional layoffs are being planned for the second half of the year, although the scale and timing remain fluid, likely to be shaped by how Meta’s AI capabilities evolve in the coming months. Earlier reports had suggested that total cuts in 2026 could reach 20 per cent or more of its workforce.
The restructuring comes as chief executive Mark Zuckerberg continues to steer the company towards an AI-first operating model, committing hundreds of billions of dollars to the transition. Internally, this shift is already visible: teams within Reality Labs have been reorganised, engineers have been moved into a newly formed Applied AI unit, and a Meta Small Business division has been created to align with broader structural changes.
The trend is hardly isolated. Across the tech sector, companies are trimming headcount while investing aggressively in automation. Amazon, for instance, has reportedly cut around 30,000 corporate roles nearly 10 per cent of its white-collar workforce citing efficiency gains driven by AI. Data from Layoffs.fyi shows over 73,000 tech employees have already lost jobs this year, compared with 153,000 in all of 2024.
For Meta, the move echoes its earlier “year of efficiency” in 2022–23, when about 21,000 roles were eliminated amid slowing growth and market pressures. This time, however, the backdrop is different. The company is financially stronger, generating over $200 billion in revenue and $60 billion in profit last year, with shares up 3.68 per cent year-to-date though still below last summer’s peak.
That contrast underlines the shift underway. These layoffs are less about survival and more about reinvention. As Meta restructures itself around AI from autonomous coding agents to advanced machine learning systems, the question is no longer whether the company will change, but how many roles will be left unchanged when it does.
