Meta Platforms, Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated during the company's Q3 earnings call that AI-generated content will see significant growth on Instagram and Facebook, marking the beginning of social media's "third era."

Zuckerberg outlined the evolution of social media in two phases: initially dominated by content from friends, family, and followed accounts, followed by the rise of creator-generated content. Moving forward, AI-generated content will become the backbone of the third phase, with Meta injecting "another massive content library" into its recommendation system to boost user engagement and ad performance.

As part of this strategy, Meta's AI video platform "Vibes," launched in September, has shown strong performance, allowing users to create and share AI-generated videos. According to Meta CFO Susan Li, users have already generated over 20 billion images on Vibes, with weekly retention rates described as "impressive." Meanwhile, downloads of Meta's flagship AI app surged in mid-October, with daily active users jumping from 775,000 to 2.7 million in four weeks and approximately 300,000 new daily downloads.

Zuckerberg emphasized that recommendation algorithms capable of "deeply understanding" AI content will become highly valuable technology, as they can optimize both human-created and AI-generated content, improving interaction and monetization efficiency.

However, Meta's aggressive expansion has raised concerns on Wall Street. The company increased its 2025 capital expenditure forecast to $70–72 billion and warned of "significant increases" in 2026 spending, primarily driven by AI infrastructure. Several investment banks subsequently lowered their price targets, with some analysts comparing the current spending to Meta's costly metaverse strategy in 2021–2022, fearing prolonged return cycles.

Zuckerberg defended the strategy, stating that Meta has repeatedly faced situations where capacity is quickly exhausted: "We always think we're building aggressively enough, but demand consistently exceeds expectations." He suggested that the company would rather over-invest in capital and computing power than miss out on user growth opportunities in the AI era.