Meta hired Salesforce’s CEO of AI, Clara Shih, to lead a new organization building AI tools for businesses that use Meta’s apps to reach consumers, according to a LinkedIn post from Shih on Tuesday. Meta confirmed the appointment and the new Business AI group in a statement to TechCrunch.
“I’m thrilled to share today that I’ve joined Meta to lead a new Business AI group,” said Shih in a LinkedIn post. “Our vision for this new product group is to make cutting-edge AI accessible to every business, empowering all to find success and own their future in the AI era.”
Another Salesforce AI executive, Adam Evans, will take over Shih’s role overseeing the company’s AI efforts, TechCrunch has learned. Evans is now the executive vice president and general manager of AI at Salesforce, according to his LinkedIn.
Meta has a unusual business model around AI, claiming to use an open-source approach, though not by everyone’s definition of it. Mark Zuckerberg’s company doesn’t sell a subscription to its AI chatbots, like OpenAI or Google, in order to generate revenue. Instead, Meta is betting that its Llama large-language models will make its current family of apps that much better. These AI tools for businesses seem to be part of that effort.
Specifically, Meta’s new group will offer AI products made with Llama to the millions of businesses advertising and creating content on Instagram, Facebook, and WhatsApp. It’s unclear exactly what kind of tools Meta could offer these folks, but offering tools to create AI-generated ads seems likely. Meta has recently pushed more AI-generated content into its social media feeds, including a carousel on Facebook of AI-generated photos, and AI chatbots imitating content creators on Instagram.
That’s a notable shift for Meta’s platforms, which previously only featured human-generated content. Giving businesses tools to cheaply generate more ads could be quite lucrative for Meta. It’s un …