browsing the feed feels like a confirmation of AI skeptics’ biggest criticisms by Victoria Song So far, prompting AI chatbots — those are the questions or requests you make — has primarily been a private affair. You pull up ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, type in your prompt, and whatever it spits out is for your eyes only — unless you take a screenshot and terrorize the world by posting your AI experiments online. But not with the Meta AI site you can share your AI results with just two clicks The result is a fascinating microcosm of the human-AI experience and, specifically, how so few people know what to do with generative AI. The irony is that Meta VP of product Connor Hayes told The Verge the company added the whole social aspect to show AI newbies what they can use it for the social feed feels more like a poster for all the complaints people have about AI It’s not something that proves AI searches are inherently better I don’t think I’ve come away with new ideas of how to prompt AI either The public nature of the feed can feel creepy Wading into the feed can sometimes feel like eavesdropping on thoughts you weren’t meant to see or hear. This prompt, for example, feels an awful lot like I’ve wandered into a therapy session where I watch someone convince Meta AI to validate their decision to dabble with Bitcoin There’s also this extremely detailed image request for a “sultry Asian beauty exud[ing] bad girl energy at night” and the thirteen user attempts to get it just right It makes you wonder how much of the feed was accidentally shared Probably very little; you have to deliberately hit the share button which triggers a large window alerting you that you’re about to post everything publicly You then have to actually click a separate ‘Post’ button it also feels weird that people want me to see this That you can comment on people’s results adds another interesting dynamic chatting with AI has largely been a private affair Would you prompt differently if you knew that other people would eventually see Meta is just the first to add a social feed to its chatbot. OpenAI is reportedly working on its own version for ChatGPT. And Elon Musk’s Grok chatbot is now available to all X users Creating something shareable inevitably leads to viral trends that encourage people to see what AI is all about The trick is giving the average person — not first adopters not tech evangelists — enough reason to stick around I’m a naturally curious person who has fun poking at AI chatbots I can find plenty of things to gawp at or pique my interest A weekly newsletter by David Pierce designed to tell you everything you need to download, watch, read, listen to, and explore that fits in The Verge’s universe. Meta is bringing its large language model chatbot to WhatsApp, Instagram, and Messenger users with a variety of new ways to generate AI responses and images The decision by Mark Zuckerberg's Meta to force its Artificial Intelligence (AI) onto billions of users via a mandatory update to WhatsApp hasn't gone down very well. In case you've missed it Meta has added a glowing -indigo-violet circle in the corner of your WhatsApp that cannot be switched off the latest generation of large language model (LLM) from the Californian company which is run by Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg Tapping the icon launches a one-on-one conversation with Meta AI — a chatbot that competes with the likes of OpenAI's ChatGPT, which is built directly into Windows 11 and accessible via Siri on the latest iPhone models When trying to tag friends and family in messages typing the @ symbol within a WhatsApp conversation will now also suggest Meta AI Tagging the chatbot in an ongoing conversation will let you access all of its features without leaving the chat window everyone will be able to see the original prompt to @MetaAI and its AI-generated response Meta says only its Artificial Intelligence will be able to read messages with the @Meta AI command ...so your messages with friends and family should stay away from prying eyes despite the chatbot intervening with an answer to your query Meta AI is also baked into Meta's other immensely popular services it seems to be WhatsApp — the most popular messaging platform on the planet with over 2.5 billion users across Android and iOS — where the addition has caused the biggest stink There's no way to switch off Meta AI.. Powered by Meta's latest Llama 4 large language model (LLM) Meta AI can answer general knowledge questions or conjure never-before-seen imagery based on a written prompt ...everything we've come to expect from ChatGPT WhatsApp users will need to use the word "imagine" at the start of the message to kickstart the image-creation tool It can be used to dream-up still pictures as well as animated GIFs that you won't find anywhere else Irritated app users have flooded social media to express their frustration with the new Meta AI feature "Why the hell do we need an AI in a chat app It is so annoying," complained one WhatsApp user on social news site Another added: "The search part is the most annoying am just trying to search someone's name not ask GPT to make a picture." Meta AI can dream-up new images and animated GIFs from a written prompt with audio and video on the roadmap for the technology in the coming months one user asked: "Anyone else feeling like their phone just got a clingy new roommate?" Others have branded it "bug-ridden rubbish" and "pointless and irritating" WhatsApp's parent company Meta has no plans to make the button removable The Californian company has defended its implementation of the new feature insisting it's "entirely optional" ...despite users being unable to remove it from their screens Digging into the Settings screen in WhatsApp on both Android and iOS there is no option to reposition or remove the circular icon for Meta AI A spokesperson for Meta told The Daily Telegraph: "We think giving people these options is a good thing and we’re always listening to feedback from our users to make WhatsApp better." Meta maintains that personal messages remain end-to-end encrypted It has likened the arrival of Meta AI to other now-permanent fixtures in the chat app both of these currently sit outside of the main list of individual and group chats The Information Commissioner's Office told the BBC it would "continue to monitor the adoption of Meta AI's technology and use of personal data within WhatsApp." WhatsApp is planning to introduce even more AI features to its immensely popular services The messaging app recently announced it would explore adding AI-powered writing suggestions and message summaries under a new suite of tools called 'Private Processing' These features are expected to be made available in the coming weeks — a decision that's likely to frustrate many WhatsApp users who are already unhappy with the current AI integration accused Meta of "exploiting its existing market" and "using people as test subjects for AI." "No one should be forced to use AI," he told the BBC Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta launched a standalone artificial intelligence app Tuesday putting it in direct competition with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and marking the latest app to release as part of the larger AI race (Photo by DREW ANGERER/AFP via Getty Images) Meta announced the launch of the app which features an AI chatbot and a “discover” feed that allows users to see how others are using the assistant The app uses Meta’s Llama 4 model, which was released early this month and has been touted by Meta as being more cost-efficient than competitor models like Gemini Meta’s AI assistant could already be used on WhatsApp Get Forbes Breaking News Text Alerts: We’re launching text message alerts so you'll always know the biggest stories shaping the day’s headlines. Text “Alerts” to (201) 335-0739 or sign up here The app gives users access to image generation image editing and a voice mode that can be interacted with while using other apps on a device The AI chatbot can answer questions using the web and use information users have shared on Meta products such as their Facebook profiles or the content they like on the social media app Those who link their Facebook and Instagram profiles to their account center can create a more personalized experience when interacting with the Meta AI app Users with Ray-Ban Meta glasses will be able to interact with Meta AI on the glasses and the app enabling them to begin conversations through the eyewear and resume them through the app The Meta AI app also features a voice assistant demo that provides more conversational responses though it does not have access to the internet or real-time information Meta’s stock was up a little over 1% as of 2 p.m continuing a rise following its lowest point of the year on April 21 Shares of the tech giant are down 7.3% in 2025 Microsoft (Copilot) and Anthropic (Claude) all have AI Apps Elon Musk’s xAI launched a standalone app for its Grok chatbot in January Similar to how Meta’s AI was once exclusively on the company’s social media apps meaning it can train highly optimized models across a unique data set,” Kyle Hill chief technology officer of business technology firm ANS “Meta has an opportunity to stand out from the crowd but it needs to figure out what its killer differentiator is.” that is capable of training AI models at exceptional speeds Many Voices. Create a free account to share your thoughts.  Forbes Community GuidelinesOur community is about connecting people through open and thoughtful conversations We want our readers to share their views and exchange ideas and facts in a safe space In order to do so, please follow the posting rules in our site's Terms of Service.  We've summarized some of those key rules below Your post will be rejected if we notice that it seems to contain: User accounts will be blocked if we notice or believe that users are engaged in: Thanks for reading our community guidelines. Please read the full list of posting rules found in our site's Terms of Service. Goodbye to the old Facebook - Zuckerberg admits he no longer connects family and friends faces FTC lawsuit that could dismantle Meta This trial has been open since April 14, and it has revealed some incredible facts, such as that the purchase of those last two social networks, WhatsApp (one billion dollars) and Instagram (19 billion dollars), could be an illegal strategy. On the stand, Zuckerberg himself admitted that Facebook is no longer used to connect with family and friends. Want to know more about what’s happening to Meta? We’ll tell you below. During his testimony, Zuckerberg admitted that the social network that made him a billionaire is no longer what it used to be. Today, he explained, Meta is no longer about personal relationships. Meta is focused on content, discovering viral trends, and following global conversations. He said it himself: what used to be a platform to share pictures of your cat with distant relatives or childhood classmates is now a showcase where the algorithm is in charge. The trial also focused (a lot) on Meta’s two most controversial acquisitions: Instagram (in 2012) and WhatsApp (in 2014). Zuckerberg defended both decisions. He said those platforms wouldn’t have survived without Meta’s investment, and now they’re essential tools for billions of people. Basically, his argument was: “We didn’t destroy them, we made them bigger” Meta insists it’s not acting alone. Platforms like TikTok, Reddit, YouTube and X (formerly Twitter) are cited as direct competition. The company also reminds everyone that all of its acquisitions were legally approved at the time. And of course, undoing them now would just be changing the rules of the tech game. The trial will extend until July 2025. If the FTC wins this first phase, a second and even tougher stage would begin, aiming to argue that forcing Meta to sell Instagram and WhatsApp would directly benefit competition and consumers. Basically, the future of how large digital platforms work. If Meta loses, it wouldn’t be surprising if other giants like Google or Amazon start facing similar lawsuits. Pressure against big tech isn’t new, but this time, the one on the ropes is Zuckerberg. And this time, there’s no “like” button to save him Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker FacebookThreadsRSSThe long-awaited antitrust trial between Meta and the Federal Trade Commission kicked off on April 14th DC District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg is hearing arguments about whether then-Facebook illegally monopolized the market for “personal social networking services” through its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp The FTC first brought the case in late 2020 While it was initially thrown out by the judge he let an amended version move forward after the government beefed up details about why it thinks Meta is a monopoly This phase of the trial will help the judge determine if Meta is liable for breaking antitrust law he’ll later rule on how those harms should be remedied The FTC is pushing for Instagram and WhatsApp should be spun off This is the third US trial seeking to break up Big Tech in recent years, following the Justice Department’s two separate cases against Google over its search and ad tech businesses Read below for all of our updates on the FTC v Lauren Feiner The judge opted to watch video testimony slated for the day in his chambers We’ll go live again this week when the trial continues A 2014 chat log between Systrom and Deng seems to undercut Deng’s testimony that he doesn’t recall Meta scaling back growth resources for Instagram Deng says he doesn’t have enough context to confirm what he and Systrom were discussing but described the chat as a “knee-jerk reaction” to an email they mentioned at the time “Am I reading correctly we now have less growth support “This isn’t great for us,” Deng wrote at the time Deng, who moved to Instagram in 2013 until 2015 after working on Facebook Messenger, is challenging Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom’s testimony that the app could have reached the same success without Meta and that the company deprived it of resources Deng says Meta helped Instagram with speeding up high quality hiring and sharing infrastructure and growth team staff Deng left Instagram several years before Systrom departed the company who led product for Facebook’s messenger product in the early 2010s says he was not worried about WhatsApp growing into a big rival in the US Since many people in the US had iPhones where they could send mobile messages including photos through iMessage “people just expected more here than just text messaging,” which was the focus of the simple WhatsApp service “There’s nothing about what they did that signaled they remotely wanted to get into more expressive messaging.” he says Former product executive Peter Deng warned colleagues about the existential threat of mobile messaging apps moving into Facebook’s core space he called messaging rivals “the biggest threat to our product that I’ve ever seen in my 5 years here at Facebook; it’s bigger than G+ referring to Google’s now-defunct social media competitor “These guys actually have a credible strategy: start with the most intimate social graph (i.e and build from there.” Deng testifies he was referring to the three mobile apps that had started adding such features and not the one Facebook ultimately acquired: WhatsApp Former TikTok director of UX research Eric Morrison testifies in a short video deposition that as of 2022 TikTok “was not necessarily serving that need to connect to people that you already know.” This is the need that the FTC says Facebook and Instagram uniquely fill alongside the smaller apps Snapchat and MeWe Hegeman concedes that even with TikTok becoming a more significant competitor in the past two years Facebook’s user base and the time users spend on it have continued to grow Hegeman says that the (not publicly disclosed) number of users who opted out of off-app tracking through Apple’s App Tracking Transparency policy mostly reflects Apple’s scare tactics in framing the question to users rather than whether users actually prefer not to share their data with Meta He adds that Apple frames the ask very differently when asking users about similar opt-ins for its own products “I think it’s a clear example of them trying to leverage their position controlling the iOS operating system to advantage their position in the market,” he says Meta realized that focusing on surfacing friends and family content wasn’t helping it as much as it had hoped Competitors like TikTok were taking over a lot of time users would spend online and Hegeman says Meta found it to be a better strategy to broaden the focus of the Facebook app to include investments in video and other kinds of content Meta found that by reducing the relative amount of ads some groups saw by 80 percent it only saw about a 3 percent increase of a usage metric This shows ads aren’t a major cost for consumers because if a company like Apple lowered the price of its iPhone by 80 percent it would likely see much more than a 3 percent increase in sales Meta began offering an ad-free version of its products there for 6 Euros a month Hegeman says — just about 0.007 percent of users opted to pay for the service Meta found when it tested a new system to customize how many ads it shows based on how much a user likes or dislikes them The time they spent on the platforms and engaged on it didn’t change much “This change had a minimal impact on people’s experience and was not very noticeable,” Hegeman says That’s presumably because when users are given an option to give Facebook and Instagram less data at least a significant chunk of them take it since the judge sealed the courtroom to discuss internal metrics like how many people opted into the tracking That’s theme of the FTC’s questioning of Meta’s CRO The FTC’s Stephen Pearson is asking about what Meta says it collects in its privacy policy and points out that if Instagram were independent Meta uses this data to fuel personalized advertising Pearson is also beginning to touch on ad load — or the relative amount of ads to organic posts users see in their feed — which the FTC has tried to show Meta can increase with relatively little risk of losing users the top executive in charge of monetizing Facebook and Instagram He previously led product management for the Facebook feed What users say they want and what they show they want through their actions can be two different things Cobb illustrates this point with the example of chronological feeds While users repeatedly report this as a feature they’d like Cobb says every time the company has tested it satisfaction with the app declines and users’ engagement changes But that dip soon recovered, Cobb testifies. He’s referencing the sweeping content moderation and fact-checking policy changes CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced in January just ahead of President Donald Trump’s inauguration Dips in how users feel about Meta’s brand are often correlated to media coverage — not necessarily actual changes to the product Meta research executive Curtiss Cobb testifies on cross-examination The FTC had tried to frame the fact that users don’t leave the apps in droves after reporting feeling worse about Meta’s brand shows they’re locked in due to Meta’s alleged monopoly by showing that just because users feel worse about the brand after a specific media event doesn’t mean that its products are getting any worse — and that might be reason enough to stay A June 2019 document says that the data privacy scandal “is the most likely significant event that would have had a negative impact on both revenue and engagement.” But even so “we failed to detect significant and consistent effects of sentiment (or adverse events) on these metrics.” Cobb quibbled with how the FTC’s attorney restated the finding back to him and Boasberg noticeably leaned back in his chair and rolled his eyes after a repeated back-and-forth Meta found that a majority of Facebook users came to the platform for this reason A document from the time describes “Facebook’s core value proposition” as “robustly anchored on ‘keeping up with friends and family,’” which is exactly the trait the FTC says is unique to personal social networking services Cobb makes a point of saying that this was true at the time DC courthouse discussing the US law that — at least on paper — effectively banned the app it’s serving as a witness for the government On Wednesday, TikTok’s head of operations and trust and safety Adam Presser testified in the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust trial against Meta, in the same courthouse where a panel of judges ruled that the government could expel TikTok from the country Presser’s role in the Meta trial was to explain the ways in which TikTok competes (or doesn’t) with Meta’s services in a market the FTC has defined as personal social networking — a category the FTC says contains only Meta’s services His team surveys Facebook and Instagram users about how they feel about whether the company cares about its users the team found that “in the US this year Facebook has slid to the 21st place and falls behind all other tech companies we measured” in the metric it calls “Relative Cares About Users” or RCAU Drawing on filings in TikTok’s litigation against a US ban Meta points out that TikTok has said it could take years to perform the maintenance needed to keep a US-only app running if it were separated from ByteDance TikTok also said that reconfiguring its content moderation systems for a US-only app would reach unsustainable costs despite serving a platform of 170 million US users Meta is drawing a comparison to how it believes it was uniquely positioned to help Instagram with its infrastructure and content moderation because of its own scale and success My experience wasn't quite an absolute win My in-flight Quest 3 experience was somewhat turbulent but before a recent trip from London to Miami I’d never taken one with me on a flight – and until some key things change my troubles began before we took off – in fact they began before I’d even left home Checking Meta's app store I was surprised to find no ‘flight-approved’ category that would easily supply me with software recommendations And searching for movie downloads was much more of a challenge than I expected While the Quest supports streaming platforms like Netflix the browser-based (rather than app-based) reveals displays its faults clearly In this form it's an online-only service as it's impossible to download content to watch later offline Eventually I sourced a digital copy of Avengers: Endgame in 3D but it wasn't a hassle-free process – far from it I also found a mixed-reality chess game I thought might be fun not realizing it was an online-only title until I was in the air After my meal had been served and the seat belt sign had been switched off so I could fetch it from my stowed bag I donned my Quest 3 and dove into the metaverse armed with my limited entertainment selection Not just the movie itself (I haven’t watched it since the midnight release showing years ago and I’d forgotten how great it was) but the overall experience I had installed Bigscreen – a free app which transports you to different cinema screen environments to watch movies in – but ended up just using the Meta TV app in mixed-reality mode I could dim my surroundings and enlarge the screen so it felt like I was in my own private movie theatre but I wasn't shut off from my surroundings so I could pay attention if a flight attendant walked past with food or drink It was leagues ahead of the dinky screen installed in my seat that I'd have had to rely on for entertainment otherwise Not being in VR helped during turbulence too Because I could see the real world shaking thanks to the MR passthrough feed I didn't feel particularly nauseous during the ordeal something I suspect wouldn’t be the case had I been in VR I was able to watch one hour of Endgame in mixed reality using just under 50% of my Quest 3's battery life With a charging cable and power bank I could extend this use time but relying solely on the Quest 3 as inflight entertainment for a long voyage would clearly be a challenge You could mitigate this with an add-on like the one of the Kiwi Design battery straps I've reviewed but then you’d run into the next problem: bag space Baggage space on an airline comes at a premium and filling your carry on with a fully kitted out VR headset setup is a non starter So I replaced the bulky battery strap with the more compact (and less functional) elastic strap This reduced the space the Quest 3 took up considerably but it still wasn't compact – especially with the controllers With these battery and space issues in mind it feels like a VR headset would be ideal for a shorter (sub-four-hour journey) where you’re struggling for baggage space across the hold and cabin so carrying the headset wouldn’t be a problem I should also note that I was flying in Virgin Atlantic's premium economy section In a more tightly packed economy seat I could see my arm movements being annoying to any stranger unlucky enough to be sitting next to me making VR way too impractical (and risky) to be viable outside of more premium classes but it’s also more of a battery sink Despite these issues I could see how close the Meta Quest 3 is to greatness and how the in-flight experience could be improved with a few upgrades A bigger in built battery would be ideal too as would a simpler way to find and download movies to the headset and it just serves to highlight why Meta and others must do more to improve this aspect of VR as finding even one 3D movie was a major hassle but I'll admit to feeling a little tense while in the air and that tension was noticeably absent when using my Quest 3 So while I won't be taking my Meta headset on my next long-haul flight I can see a future where it becomes my go-to travel gadget Hamish HectorSocial Links NavigationSenior Staff Writer NewsHamish is a Senior Staff Writer for TechRadar and you’ll see his name appearing on articles across nearly every topic on the site from smart home deals to speaker reviews to graphics card news and everything in between He uses his broad range of knowledge to help explain the latest gadgets and if they’re a must-buy or a fad fueled by hype Though his specialty is writing about everything going on in the world of virtual reality and augmented reality you will then be prompted to enter your display name Please try using other words for your search or explore other sections of the website for relevant information Our team is working diligently to resolve the issue Thank you for your patience and understanding Meta stock (NASDAQ: META) recently reported its Q1 results with revenues and earnings well above the street estimates It reported sales of $42.3 billion and earnings of $6.43 per share compared to the consensus estimates of $41.3 billion and $5.22 The company continued to benefit from an increasing user base Meta Platforms’ revenues of $42.3 billion in Q1 reflected a 16% y-o-y rise driven by a 5% rise in ad impressions and a 10% growth in average price per ad Meta also reported a 6% rise in family daily active people (DAP) to 3.43 billion Meta’s primary revenue stream comes from advertising across its family of apps (Facebook The company is leveraging AI to enhance its ad targeting capabilities and is investing in AI-powered content generation Meta is making substantial infrastructure investments with projected capital expenditures between $64-72 billion for 2025 Not only did the company post higher revenues Higher revenues and margin expansion resulted in earnings of $6.43 per share Meta expects its Q2 revenue to be in the range of $42.5 billion to $45.5 billion the sales are aligning to the street expectation of $44 billion META stock is trending higher in after-hours trading Looking at the stock’s performance over a slightly longer period the increase in META stock over the last four-years has been far from consistent with annual returns being considerably more volatile than the S&P 500 And it has comfortably outperformed the S&P 500 over the last four-year period HQ Portfolio stocks provided better returns with less risk versus the benchmark index; less of a roller-coaster ride as evident in HQ Portfolio performance metrics Given the current uncertain macroeconomic environment surrounding tariffs and trade wars could META stock experience significant growth We estimate Meta Platforms’ valuation at approximately $702 per share representing a 20% upside from its current level of around $580 (after market hours) Our forecast is based on a 27x price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio higher than META’s four-year average P/E of 22x This increased valuation multiple appears justified given the company’s recent strong advertising growth and improved profitability Ongoing tariff issues may reduce ad spending from China while Meta’s aggressive AI investments create uncertainty about whether these expenditures will ultimately prove worthwhile and meaningfully boost the company’s future earnings growth While META stock looks like it has ample room for growth it is helpful to see how Meta’s Peers fare on metrics that matter You will find other valuable comparisons for companies across industries at Peer Comparisons The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq This data feed is not available at this time These symbols will be available throughout the site during your session These instruments will be available throughout the site during your session Smart Portfolio is supported by our partner 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By connecting my portfolio to TipRanks Smart Portfolio I agree to their Terms of Use BREAKING: Berkshire Shares Slide On News Of Buffett Exit Meta Platforms and Tesla lived up to their name in 2024 with solid gains performance for these mega-cap stocks has been negative thus far Due to their outsized market capitalizations Magnificent Seven stocks hold a disproportionate influence on the market-cap… Trade war perils are swirling around ocean shippers and the ports that serve them Get instant access to exclusive stock lists expert market analysis and powerful tools with 2 months of IBD Digital for only $20 Learn how you can make more money with IBD's investing tools *Real-time prices by Nasdaq Last Sale. Real-time quote and/or trade prices are not sourced from all markets. Ownership data provided by LSEG and Estimate data provided by FactSet. 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Connecting decision makers to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas, Bloomberg quickly and accurately delivers business and financial information, news and insight around the world with first-quarter revenue beating expectations The maker of Facebook and Instagram reported $42.3 billion in first-quarter sales, the company said in a statementBloomberg Terminal Wednesday That topped analysts’ estimates for $41.4 billion for the quarter ended March 31 Meta also said current-quarter revenue will be in line with analysts’ expectations and that it’s responding to the trade war by rethinking suppliers and projecting higher costs for infrastructure listening to an audio clip of a woman asking an AI chatbot for medical advice about her sick pet turtle As someone who loves to lurk in other people's business The second (which doesn't require the glasses) is to be a stand-alone Meta AI assistant that you may have already encountered in Instagram's and Facebook's search bars it's a chatbot app that (I guess?) is meant to compete with ChatGPT like this one I had made of a dog reading Business Insider: There's also a public feed of other people's AI chats that you can scroll through Most of this feed is people making silly images — Darth Vader eating ice cream Some of these came from suggested prompts when you first open the app your AI chats are not public by default — you have to choose to share them individually by tapping a share button I get the sense that some people don't really understand what they're sharing Or another person who was asking for advice about what legal measures he could take against his former employer after getting laid off Or a woman asking about the effects of folic acid for a woman in her 60s who has already gone through menopause Or someone asking for help with their Blue Cross health insurance bill I found all those examples mixed in with funny cartoon images in my public feed Perhaps these people knew they were sharing on a public feed and wanted to do so we built Meta AI to connect you with the people and things you care about a place to share and explore how others are using AI You can see the best prompts people are sharing or remix them to make them your own." (I asked Meta for comment.) Is seeing other people's AI chats even interesting at all Would it be interesting to see the AI chats of people I know I barely want to see real photos of people I don't know unless they're incredibly hot; I'm bored pretty quickly by seeing AI slop from a stranger Is a social AI feed the social feed of the future Even trying to be as open-minded as possible about this MENLO PARK, Calif., April 30, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Meta Platforms, Inc. (Nasdaq: META) today reported financial results for the quarter ended March 31 "We've had a strong start to an important year our community continues to grow and our business is performing very well," said Mark Zuckerberg "We're making good progress on AI glasses and Meta AI which now has almost 1 billion monthly actives." First Quarter 2025 Financial Highlights except percentages and per share amounts               $                  42,314 $                  36,455 $                  17,555 $                  13,818 $                    1,738 $                    1,814 $                  16,644 $                  12,369 $                      6.43 $                      4.71 First Quarter 2025 Operational and Other Financial Highlights (1) For more information on our free cash flow non-GAAP financial measure see the sections entitled "Non-GAAP Financial Measures" and "Reconciliation of GAAP to Non-GAAP Results" in this press release We expect second quarter 2025 total revenue to be in the range of $42.5-45.5 billion Our guidance assumes foreign currency is an approximately 1% tailwind to year-over-year total revenue growth We expect full year 2025 total expenses to be in the range of $113-118 billion lowered from our prior outlook of $114-119 billion We anticipate our full year 2025 capital expenditures including principal payments on finance leases increased from our prior outlook of $60-65 billion This updated outlook reflects additional data center investments to support our artificial intelligence efforts as well as an increase in the expected cost of infrastructure hardware The majority of our capital expenditures in 2025 will continue to be directed to our core business we expect our full year 2025 tax rate to be in the range of 12-15% we continue to monitor an active regulatory landscape including legal and regulatory headwinds in the EU and the U.S that could significantly impact our business and our financial results The European Commission (EC) recently announced its decision that our subscription for no ads model is not compliant with the Digital Markets Act (DMA) Based on feedback from the EC in connection with the DMA we expect we will need to make some modifications to our model which could result in a materially worse user experience for European users and a significant impact to our European business and revenue as early as the third quarter of 2025 We will appeal the EC's DMA decision but any modifications to our model may be imposed before or during the appeal process Meta will host a conference call to discuss its results at 2:00 p.m. PT / 5:00 p.m. ET today. The live webcast of the call can be accessed at the Meta Investor Relations website at investor.atmeta.com along with the company's earnings press release Following the call, a replay will be available at the same website. Transcripts of conference calls with publishing equity research analysts held today will also be posted to the investor.atmeta.com website Meta is building the future of human connection powered by artificial intelligence and immersive technologies and WhatsApp further empowered billions around the world Meta is moving beyond 2D screens toward experiences that foster deeper connections and unlock new possibilities Investors:Kenneth Dorell[email protected] / investor.atmeta.com Press:Ashley Zandy[email protected] / meta.com/news Additional information will also be set forth in our Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31 please note that the date of this press release is April 30 and any forward-looking statements contained herein are based on assumptions that we believe to be reasonable as of this date We undertake no obligation to update these statements as a result of new information or future events For a discussion of limitations in the measurement of certain of our community metrics see the section entitled "Limitations of Key Metrics and Other Data" in our most recent quarterly or annual report filed with the SEC To supplement our condensed consolidated financial statements which are prepared and presented in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles in the United States (GAAP) we use the following non-GAAP financial measures: revenue excluding foreign exchange effect advertising revenue excluding foreign exchange effect The presentation of these financial measures is not intended to be considered in isolation or as a substitute for financial information prepared and presented in accordance with GAAP Investors are cautioned that there are material limitations associated with the use of non-GAAP financial measures as an analytical tool these measures may be different from non-GAAP financial measures used by other companies limiting their usefulness for comparison purposes We compensate for these limitations by providing specific information regarding the GAAP amounts excluded from these non-GAAP financial measures We believe these non-GAAP financial measures provide investors with useful supplemental information about the financial performance of our business enable comparison of financial results between periods where certain items may vary independent of business performance and allow for greater transparency with respect to key metrics used by management in operating our business Our non-GAAP financial measures are adjusted for the following items: We translated revenue for the three months ended March 31 2025 using the prior year's monthly exchange rates for our settlement or billing currencies other than the U.S which we believe is a useful metric that facilitates comparison to our historical performance Purchases of property and equipment; Principal payments on finance leases We subtract both purchases of property and equipment and principal payments on finance leases in our calculation of free cash flow because we believe that these two items collectively represent the amount of property and equipment we need to procure to support our business regardless of whether we procure such property or equipment with a finance lease We believe that this methodology can provide useful supplemental information to help investors better understand underlying trends in our business Free cash flow is not intended to represent our residual cash flow available for discretionary expenditures For more information on our non-GAAP financial measures and a reconciliation of GAAP to non-GAAP measures see the "Reconciliation of GAAP to Non-GAAP Results" table in this press release CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF INCOME $                      6.59 $                      4.86 Weighted-average shares used to compute earnings per share:                                        $                  28,750 $                  43,889 $                280,213 $                276,054 $                    8,512 $                    7,687 Accrued expenses and other current liabilities Common stock and additional paid-in capital Total liabilities and stockholders' equity                                                                               CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS Adjustments to reconcile net income to net cash provided by operating activities: Sales and maturities of marketable securities Taxes paid related to net share settlement of equity awards Payments for dividends and dividend equivalents and restricted cash equivalents at beginning of the period and restricted cash equivalents at end of the period $                  30,071 $                  33,284 and restricted cash equivalents to the           condensed consolidated balance sheets $                  32,307 included in prepaid expenses and other current assets $                       448 $                       630 We report our financial results for our two reportable segments: Family of Apps (FoA) and Reality Labs (RL) and mixed reality related consumer hardware The following table presents our segment information of revenue and income (loss) from operations: $                     41,392 $                   35,635 $                     42,314 $                   36,455 $                     21,765 $                   17,664 Total income from operations                                                                                              $                     17,555 $                   13,818 Reconciliation of GAAP to Non-GAAP Results Foreign exchange effect on 2025 revenue using 2024 rates $                  43,551 Revenue excluding foreign exchange effect year-over-year change % $                  41,392 $                  35,635 Foreign exchange effect on 2025 advertising revenue using 2024 rates Advertising revenue excluding foreign exchange effect $                  42,616 GAAP advertising revenue year-over-year change % Advertising revenue excluding foreign exchange effect year-over-year change %                    $                  24,026 $                  19,246 $                  10,334 $                  12,531 Meta today announced that Patrick Collison and Dina Powell McCormick have been elected to the company's board of directors (NASDAQ: META) announced today that the company's first quarter 2025 financial results will be released after market close on.. Computer & Electronics Social Media Earnings Earnings Do not sell or share my personal information: Kenrick Cai in San Francisco and Echo Wang in New York; Editing by Nia Williams and Christopher Cushing Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab Kenrick Cai is a correspondent for Reuters based in San Francisco. He covers Google, its parent company Alphabet and artificial intelligence. Cai joined Reuters in 2024. He previously worked at Forbes magazine, where he was a staff writer covering venture capital and startups. He received a Best in Business award from the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing in 2023. He is a graduate of Duke University. , opens new tab Browse an unrivalled portfolio of real-time and historical market data and insights from worldwide sources and experts. , opens new tabScreen for heightened risk individual and entities globally to help uncover hidden risks in business relationships and human networks. © 2025 Reuters. All rights reserved Meta has woven AI into all of its social media and messaging apps Chances are, you use at least one of Meta's biggest four social media and messaging apps daily, whether it's Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp or Messenger. And if you do, then you've no doubt come across Meta AI The tech giant has woven artificial intelligence into how you interact on these apps including helping with posts and editing images Here's what to know about the social network company's AI tools Meta AI isn't the only player in the race to integrate AI into everyday life. Google has its own tools, like Google Assistant and Gemini, its free chatbot, akin to ChatGPT.  While Google's AI focuses more on productivity like search results or managing schedules Meta AI is embedded into your social interactions offering assistance without you having to ask you can snap a photo and ask it to identify its details or edit the images with prompting.  Screenshot by CNETSimilarly, Amazon's Alexa and Apple's Siri are task-oriented assistants, and ChatGPT or Snapchat's My AI help with conversational experience It's almost sneaky in how it seamlessly integrates into social platforms people use daily By simply typing "@" followed by Meta AI you can summon the assistant in chats (even group chats) to offer suggestions This AI integration also extends to the search functions within Meta's apps making it more intuitive and easier to find content and explore topics based on what you see in your feed -- what Meta calls a "contextual experience."  Meta AI is currently available in 21 countries outside of the US: Argentina Meta AI is being integrated into everyday products like its Ray-Ban Meta glasses These glasses can assist you in various ways like remembering where you parked your car (woohoo!).  Starting this summer, you will be able to use the voice command, "Hey Meta start live AI" to give Meta AI a live view of whatever you can see through your glasses The glasses can also take actions based on what you're looking at you can ask AI to make a call or scan a QR code for you MetaYou'll also be able to use the voice command, "Hey Meta, start live translation" with your Meta Ray-Bans to automatically translate incoming languages Meta's new AI app is now the primary way you can pair and manage your Ray-Ban smart glasses Other products include the Meta Quest S3 version of their stand-alone virtual reality headset, which, after the upgrades, are called a mixed-reality headset, and Orion which has been in the making for over a decade Though Ray-Ban Meta glasses and Quest devices are available across 15 countries, including some European ones, Meta AI is currently available on those devices only in the US and Canada.  For now, this feature is available only in the US. Users and businesses will be able to create custom AI chatbots without needing extensive programming knowledge. These so-called AI characters will serve as extensions of themselves or their brands enabling more engaging interactions with followers or customers Screenshot by Barbara Pazur/CNETIn full transparency all replies generated by AI will be marked as such Llama (Large Language Model Meta AI) is a family of LLMs designed to understand and generate human-like text Llama 3.3 is the latest version of this LLM It's "an instruction-tuned model." "Llama 3.3 is a text-only 70B instruction-tuned model that provides enhanced performance relative to Llama 3.1 70B – and relative to Llama 3.2 90B when used for text-only applications," Meta said in its release notes The Llama 3.3 text-only model comes in a 70B parameter and generates outputs by adjusting relationships between them Meta also plans to release models with smaller parameters optimized for mobile devices and wearables like glasses.  You can't completely disable Meta AI across the social media giant's apps but you can mute the chatbot if you find it annoying Here's how to do it across the different apps Tap the messaging icon in the top right corner Tap the rainbow circle in the left side of the search bar Meta / Screenshot by CNETTap the i in the top right corner: Meta / Screenshot by CNETTap the Mute bell icon: Meta / Screenshot by CNETToggle the Mute messages option on and choose how long you want to mute them for: Meta / Screenshot by CNETSteps to mute the AI chatbot on WhatsAppLaunch the WhatsApp app Meta / Screenshot by CNETTap on the Meta AI name at the top of the chat: Meta / Screenshot by CNETTap Notifications: Meta / Screenshot by CNETToggle the Mute notifications option on: Meta / Screenshot by CNET Lastly choose how long you want to mute notifications for: Meta / Screenshot by CNETSteps to mute the AI chatbot on MessengerLaunch the Messenger app Meta / Screenshot by CNETHit the i icon in the top right corner: Meta / Screenshot by CNETThen choose how long you want to mute Meta AI notifications for: Meta / Screenshot by CNETMeta AI: what's next?According to the company Meta AI is set to become the world's most widely used AI assistant by the end of the year Over 400 million people interact with Meta AI monthly with 185 million using it across Meta's products each week.  And with a new app just for its AI offerings Meta AI is likely to get used a whole lot more often including Sarah Silverman and Ta-Nehisi Coates will turn on the question of whether the company’s AI tools produce works that can cannibalize the authors’ book sales an exception in US copyright law that allows for permissionless use of copyrighted work in certain cases If Chhabria grants either motion, he’ll issue a ruling before the case goes to trial—and likely set an important precedent shaping how courts deal with generative AI copyright cases moving forward. Kadrey v. Meta is one of the dozens of lawsuits filed against AI companies that are winding through the US legal system While the authors were heavily focused on the piracy element of the case Chhabria spoke emphatically about his belief that the big question is whether Meta’s AI tools will hurt book sales and otherwise cause the authors to lose money and you're saying that you don't even have to pay a license to that person to use their work to create the product that's destroying the market for their work—I just don't understand how that can be fair use,” he told Meta lawyer Kannon Shanmugam (Shanmugam responded that the suggested effect was “just speculation.”) Chhabria and Shanmugam went on to debate whether Taylor Swift would be harmed if her music was fed into an AI tool that then created billions of robotic knockoffs Chhabria questioned how this would impact less-established songwriters “What about the next Taylor Swift?” he asked arguing that a “relatively unknown artist” whose work was ingested by Meta would likely have their career hampered if the model produced “a billion pop songs” in their style it sounded like the case was the authors’ to lose with Chhabria noting that Meta was “destined to fail” if the plaintiffs could prove that Meta’s tools created similar works that cratered how much money they could make from their work But Chhabria also stressed that he was unconvinced the authors would be able to show the necessary evidence Chhabria repeatedly asked whether the plaintiffs could actually substantiate accusations that Meta’s AI tools were likely to hurt their commercial prospects “It seems like you’re asking me to speculate that the market for Sarah Silverman’s memoir will be affected,” he told Boies “It’s not obvious to me that is the case.” When defendants invoke the fair use doctrine the burden of proof shifts to them to demonstrate that their use of copyrighted works is legal Boies stressed this point during the hearing but Chhabria remained skeptical that the authors’ legal team would be able to successfully argue that Meta could plausibly crater their sales He also appeared lukewarm about whether Meta’s decision to download books from places like LibGen was as central to the fair use issue as the plaintiffs argued it was is not whether something is messed up but whether it’s copyright infringement.” A ruling in the Kadrey case could play a pivotal role in the outcomes of the ongoing legal battles over generative AI and copyright. Earlier this spring, a judge issued a partial summary judgment in the first AI copyright case siding with the publishing conglomerate Thomson Reuters in its fight against AI startup Ross Intelligence that case was an outlier in several ways—including the fact that it didn’t involve generative AI tools like large language models Chhabria has acknowledged how consequential the case is and how his decisions from the bench could upend whole sectors of tech and culture “I will issue a ruling later today,” Chhabria said at the hearing’s end I will take a lot longer to think about it.” In your inbox: Will Knight's AI Lab explores advances in AI The Trump tariffs are how everything works now Big Story: If Anthropic succeeds a nation of benevolent AI geniuses could be born Scientists claim to have brought back the dire wolf Special Edition: The most dangerous hackers you’ve never heard of It is the essential source of information and ideas that make sense of a world in constant transformation The WIRED conversation illuminates how technology is changing every aspect of our lives—from culture to business The breakthroughs and innovations that we uncover lead to new ways of thinking Meta Platforms (META) stock rallied Thursday as the social media giant's first-quarter results and sales outlook eased fears about tariffs squeezing its advertising business Mark Zuckerberg also indicated its full-speed ahead for the Facebook parent company's significant AI investments Meta said late Tuesday that it earned $6.43 per share on sales of $42.3 billion for the March-ended quarter Analysts polled by FactSet projected the Menlo Park Calif.-based company would post adjusted earnings of $5.23 per share on sales of $41.3 billion Meta guided for $44 billion in sales for the June quarter That was slightly ahead of analyst estimates for $43.8 billion in Q2 sales prior to the report The sales guidance is helped by a 1% currency tailwind from a weakening dollar. Still, the outlook likely helps ease some concerns about how tariffs and the end of the de minimis import exemption for Chinese goods will hit Meta's advertising business Chinese e-commerce companies Temu and Shein are beneficiaries of the de minimis exemption and also big advertisers on Facebook and Instagram our community continues to grow and our business is performing very well," Zuckerberg On the stock market today Meta stock rose nearly 7% to 587.30 in recent premarket trading Build Your Watchlist With Customized Stock Screens Zuckerberg is not backing away from Meta's big spending on AI Meta increased its guidance for capital expenditures in 2025 to $68 billion at the midpoint The tech giant told investors in January that it planned to spend $62.5 billion on 2025 capex The spending "reflects additional data center investments to support our artificial intelligence efforts as well as an increase in the expected cost of infrastructure hardware," the company said in its news release Zuckerberg told analysts Wednesday that AI is "transforming everything we do." He added that the company is focused on utilizing AI to improve its ad business grow messaging services for businesses and develop AI devices we don't need to succeed in all of these areas to have a good ROI (return on investment)," Zuckerberg said on the conference call then I think that we will be wildly happy with the investments that we are making." the Facebook parent company lowered its expectations for total 2025 expenses to $115.5 billion $1 billion lower than the midrange of its previous guidance Meta was a 6% year-over-year increase in "daily active people," the metric the company uses to track total users of Facebook Ad impressions delivered across Meta's apps increased 5% year-over-year while the average price per ad on Facebook and elsewhere increased 10% That helped power a 16% revenue increase for Meta's "Family of Apps" business Chief Financial Officer Susan Li told analysts Wednesday that the company's sales outlook for Q2 reflects ad trends that have "generally been healthy" so far in April despite concerns tariffs will weigh down advertising "We have seen some reduced spend in the U.S which we believe is in anticipation of the de minimis exemption going away on May 2,"  Li said on the conference call "A portion of that spend has been redirected to other markets but overall spend for those advertisers is below the levels prior to April." Meta shares had fallen 6.1% this year entering Thursday compared to a 5.3% year-to-date slide for the S&P 500 Analysts expect the results will help push Meta higher Oppenheimer analyst Jason Helfstein increased his price target for Meta stock to 665 and reiterated an outperform call "Investors get the trifecta," Helfstein wrote to clients Wednesday with Meta guiding to second quarter sales that were "meaningfully better than feared," decreasing fiscal year expenses by $1 billion and increased capex based on its AI outlook Evercore ISI analyst Mark Mahaney upped his price target to 750 from 725 and reiterated an outperform call for Meta stock "Meta is facing some dramatic macro uncertainties in (2025) and the capex/investment pace is very aggressive but the company is doing this from a clear position of strength," Mahaney wrote Wednesday and excellent execution are all on display." Coming into the report, Meta stock had an IBD Composite Rating of 86 out of 99, according to IBD Stock Checkup The score combines five separate proprietary ratings into one rating The best growth stocks have a Composite Rating of 90 or better Meta Holds AI Conference With Q1 Earnings On Deck. Here's What To Watch. When To Sell Growth Stocks: This Could Be Your No. 1 Rule Get Timely Buy & Sell Alerts With IBD Leaderboard IBD Live: Learn And Analyze Growth Stocks With The Pros Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by David Bario and Deepa Babington Meta. “Meta Reports First Quarter 2025 Results.” 1);}}@media screen and (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce){.css-wjxay9-SquareButton{transition-property:background-color;transition-duration:0ms;transition-timing-function:cubic-bezier(0 1);}}@media screen and (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce){.css-152q15n-SquareButton{transition-property:background-color;transition-duration:0ms;transition-timing-function:cubic-bezier(0 1);}}.css-x340e0-SquareButton{margin:0;padding:0;display:inline-grid;-webkit-column-gap:8px;column-gap:8px;grid-template-columns:repeat(3 1);}}@media screen and (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce){.css-x340e0-SquareButton{transition-property:background-color;transition-duration:0ms;transition-timing-function:cubic-bezier(0 1);}}.css-v6oqvx{margin:0;font-family:Lato,Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:12px;line-height:20px;font-weight:700;letter-spacing:0px;font-style:normal;text-transform:none;font-stretch:normal;padding:0.5px 0px;}.css-v6oqvx::before{content:'';margin-bottom:-0.4973em;display:block;}.css-v6oqvx::after{content:'';margin-top:-0.4463em;display:block;}Listen but upped its guidance on capital spending delivered a strong earnings beat on Wednesday and that’s likely easing investor concerns over big spending on artificial intelligence whereas it previously was targeting $60 billion to $65 billion Meta spent $39 billion on capital expenditures last year Laila Maidan is a Tech and Investing reporter at MarketWatch She covers the rapid developments in the sector along with actionable investment recommendations and deep dives into valuations Wall Street remains bullish on the stocks of many tech giants we will discuss the performance of three tech giants and pick the most attractive one Apple stock has declined 18% so far in 2025. The iPhone maker exceeded analysts’ revenue and earnings expectations for the second quarter of Fiscal 2025 investors were disappointed as Apple’s Services revenue fell short of estimates CEO Tim Cook said that it is very difficult to estimate the impact of tariffs beyond June because he is not “sure what will happen with tariffs.” Apple expects tariffs to increase costs by $900 million The company has been diversifying its manufacturing to reduce its reliance on China Apple is already sourcing about 50% of its iPhones for the U.S from India and most of its other products for the U.S where tariffs are lower than those imposed on China the company still makes the “vast majority” of its products for other countries in China Morgan Stanley analyst Erik Woodring reaffirmed a Buy rating on AAPL stock with a price target of $235 The analyst stated that while Apple’s Q2 FY25 results and June quarter outlook were largely in line with estimates he thinks that management’s underlying commentary was better than expected Woodring highlighted the double-digit year-over-year growth in iPhone upgraders flat (on constant currency basis) China revenue Apple featuring in the top 2 selling smartphones in Urban China and no demand or channel pull-forward in the March quarter and none assumed in the June quarter outlook Furthermore, Woodring highlighted that despite being over-indexed to China, Apple faces only $900 million of tariff costs in the June quarter This indicates that the company’s South East Asia production diversification is working he pointed out that management didn’t offer any segment-level guidance for the June quarter and didn’t commit to how much product would come from India/Vietnam in the September quarter and beyond Overall, Wall Street has a Moderate Buy consensus rating on Apple stock based on 17 Buys, six Holds, and four Sells. The average AAPL stock price target of $229.95 indicates about 12% upside potential See more AAPL analyst ratings E-commerce and cloud computing giant Amazon reported better-than-expected results for the first quarter of 2025 revenue from the company’s AWS (Amazon Web Services) cloud business lagged expectations AWS is the leading provider of cloud infrastructure and carries a higher margin than Amazon’s retail business Further, the company issued soft guidance for the second quarter of 2025 amid pressures due to tariffs and trade policies and recessionary fears Amazon’s retail business faces notable risk from tariffs with many sellers on its third-party marketplace relying on China to make or assemble their products most analysts remain optimistic about Amazon’s prospects due to its vast network and ability to continue to offer products at attractive prices by focusing on driving further efficiencies They are also bullish on AWS due to AI-related tailwinds Following the Q1 print, Bank of America Securities analyst Justin Post increased the price target for Amazon stock to $230 from $225, while reiterating a Buy rating. The 5-star analyst noted that the company has “material” 3P (third-party) seller revenue exposure to China and other imports, and that AWS lost some ground to Microsoft’s (MSFT) Azure in the first quarter he highlighted that Amazon has shown good stability in 2025 so far He thinks that AMZN stock is well-positioned to gain from any trade agreements over the next three months He cautioned that Cloud growth could be lumpy and AWS is not seeing the benefit of ChatGPT usage like Azure Post pointed out that corporate spend remains steady and AWS growth could likely accelerate in the second half of the year as capacity ramps up With 48 Buys against one Hold recommendation, Amazon stock scores a Strong Buy consensus rating on TipRanks. The average AMZN stock price target of $241.76 implies 27.3% upside potential AMZN stock has declined 13.4% year-to-date See more AMZN analyst ratings Social media giant Meta Platforms recently reported upbeat results for the first quarter of 2025 and offered Q2 outlook that met the Street’s expectations The company’s daily active users reached 3.43 billion exceeding analysts’ estimate of 3.39 billion Meta’s ad revenue of $41.39 billion also surpassed expectations However, the company cautioned that it is seeing some reduced ad spend from Asian e-commerce exporters. Meanwhile, Meta Platforms lowered its full-year total expenses outlook range but raised its capital expenditure guidance due to additional data center investments to support its AI initiatives and an increase in the expected cost of infrastructure hardware Meta Platforms is confident about delivering strong performance despite ongoing macro challenges JPMorgan analyst Doug Anmuth raised his price target for Meta Platforms stock to $675 from $610 and maintained a Buy rating Anmuth noted that the company reported solid Q1 results and Q2 outlook and provided clarity on its AI roadmap The 5-star analyst continues to believe that Meta Platforms is well-positioned for a challenging macro environment and “vertical agnostic” inventory Wall Street has a Strong Buy consensus rating on Meta Platforms stock based on 40 Buys, two Holds, and one Sell recommendation. The average META stock price target of $698.63 implies 17% upside potential META stock has risen about 2% year-to-date See more META analyst ratings Wall Street is highly bullish on Amazon and Meta Platforms stock but cautiously optimistic on Apple Analysts see higher upside potential in Amazon stock than in the stocks of the other two tech giants analysts are optimistic about Amazon due to its dominant position in e-commerce and cloud computing Disclaimer & DisclosureReport an Issue Apple stock has declined 18% so far in 2025. The iPhone maker exceeded analysts’ revenue and earnings expectations for the second quarter of Fiscal 2025 Furthermore, Woodring highlighted that despite being over-indexed to China, Apple faces only $900 million of tariff costs in the June quarter Overall, Wall Street has a Moderate Buy consensus rating on Apple stock based on 17 Buys, six Holds, and four Sells. The average AAPL stock price target of $229.95 indicates about 12% upside potential See more AAPL analyst ratings Further, the company issued soft guidance for the second quarter of 2025 amid pressures due to tariffs and trade policies and recessionary fears Following the Q1 print, Bank of America Securities analyst Justin Post increased the price target for Amazon stock to $230 from $225, while reiterating a Buy rating. The 5-star analyst noted that the company has “material” 3P (third-party) seller revenue exposure to China and other imports, and that AWS lost some ground to Microsoft’s (MSFT) Azure in the first quarter With 48 Buys against one Hold recommendation, Amazon stock scores a Strong Buy consensus rating on TipRanks. The average AMZN stock price target of $241.76 implies 27.3% upside potential See more AMZN analyst ratings Social media giant Meta Platforms recently reported upbeat results for the first quarter of 2025 and offered Q2 outlook that met the Street’s expectations However, the company cautioned that it is seeing some reduced ad spend from Asian e-commerce exporters. Meanwhile, Meta Platforms lowered its full-year total expenses outlook range but raised its capital expenditure guidance due to additional data center investments to support its AI initiatives and an increase in the expected cost of infrastructure hardware Wall Street has a Strong Buy consensus rating on Meta Platforms stock based on 40 Buys, two Holds, and one Sell recommendation. The average META stock price target of $698.63 implies 17% upside potential See more META analyst ratings Disclaimer & DisclosureReport an Issue Despite tariff wars and macro pressures, Wall Street remains bullish on the stocks of many tech giants. Here, we will discuss the performance of three tech giants and pick the most attractive one, according to Wall Street analysts. Facebook parent Meta Platforms (META) will publish first quarter earnings later today Meta stock was trading slightly lower in morning trading despite positive views from on AI-related announcement the company made at its first-ever LlamaConevent dedicated to generative artificial intelligence on Tuesday Shares of the Magnificent Seven tech giant are still down overall for the year. Meta stock has reeled from the uncertainty surrounding President Donald Trump's tariffs policy and a trade war with China. Chinese e-commerce retailers are a major source of advertising revenue for Meta's Facebook and Instagram "The ad business broadly is tied to economic growth and given all the tariff issues and uncertainty we should expect growth to slow for the next few quarters unless something meaningful changes on tariffs," Eric Clark portfolio manager of the Rational Dynamic Brands Fund told Investor's Business Daily in an email That will put extra focus on how Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg describes the current market for Meta and his vision this year for the trillion-dollar tech giant The company's revenue guidance in particular could dictate how the market responds to Meta's report analysts expect Meta to post Q1 earnings of $5.23 per share Sales are projected to rise 13% to $41.3 billion BofA Securities analyst Justin Post wrote Monday that Google's YouTube ad performance and checks with ad-buyers indicate the top-end of Meta's first quarter revenue guidance ($41.8 billion) is "achievable." the timing of Trump's April 2 tariff announcement will likely mean that Meta's first quarter results are less in doubt "Q1 was likely another solid quarter for Meta because the impact of tariffs hadn't yet kicked in," said Debra Aho Williamson as investment from China-based advertisers is likely to plunge." Wall Street is likely to be more focused on Meta's revenue guidance for the current The consensus estimates for analysts project Meta will guide for sales of $43.8 billion "We expect some macro conservatism in the 2Q guide and expect an outlook at $40.5 billion to $44.0 billion," Post added in a client note Post rates Meta stock a buy with a 640 price target Meta has committed to spending between $60 billion and $65 billion in capital expenditures this year "We don't expect Meta to pull back much on its capex initiatives given the importance of AI but see ample leverage potential in Reality Labs where Meta spent roughly $20 billion in 2024 despite only generating $2 billion in revenue," wrote Jefferies analyst Brent Thill in a client note Monday Reality Labs is the division focused on Meta's metaverse efforts At its LlamaCon event Tuesday, Meta revealed a standalone app for its Meta AI chatbot That could allow Meta to compete more directly with OpenAI's ChatGPT app It will include a social to allow users to show friends how they are using AI. one of its most important features is the ability to sync existing Meta accounts like Instagram and Facebook to the Meta AI app and allow access to years of data," William Blair analyst Ralph Shackart wrote in a client note Tuesday Meta also launched an application programming interface (API) to allow developers to more easily integrate its Llama AI models into their products saw the move as a "big step forward" for Meta monetizing its AI efforts Llama was accessible to developers via APIs provided by cloud service providers like AWS (Amazon Web Services) and (Microsoft) Azure with which Meta had revenue agreements," Thill wrote in a Tuesday client note Meta positions itself to directly monetize Llama marking its first foray into offering its own cloud infrastructure/platform for building and running Llama apps." Meta stock has shed 5% year to date, compared with its 194% surge in 2023 and 65% gain last year. Meta has an IBD Composite Rating of 88 out of a best possible 99, according to IBD Stock Checkup Analysts Cut Amazon Price Targets With First-Quarter Report Due Soon Real-time quote and/or trade prices are not sourced from all markets Ownership data provided by LSEG and Estimate data provided by FactSet MarketSurge and other marks are trademarks owned by Investor's Business Daily Meta. “Q1 2025 Earnings Call.” Microsoft. “Microsoft Fiscal Year 2025 Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call." Meta. “Introducing the Meta AI App: A New Way to Access Your AI Assistant.” Meta Platforms. "Meta to Announce First Quarter 2025 Results." Morgan Stanley. "Where to Turn Now? Consider Visibility vs Valuation." the subscription service might not rake in meaningful revenue until next year at the earliest is a virtual assistant that uses large language models to perform reasoning tasks.Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Shreya Biswas AI has revolutionized the way people interact with technology and information making it possible for people to automate complex tasks and gain valuable insights from vast amounts of data the current state of AI processing — which relies on large language models often running on servers rather than mobile hardware — requires that users’ requests are visible to the provider it presents challenges in enabling people to use AI to process private messages while preserving the level of privacy afforded by end-to-end encryption We set out to enable AI capabilities with the privacy that people have come to expect from WhatsApp so that AI can deliver helpful capabilities without Meta or WhatsApp having access to them and in the way that meets the following principles: We’re excited to share an initial overview of Private Processing a new technology we’ve built to support people’s needs and aspirations to leverage AI in a secure and privacy-preserving way This confidential computing infrastructure built on top of a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) will make it possible for people to direct AI to process their requests — like summarizing unread WhatsApp threads or getting writing suggestions — in our secure and private cloud environment Private Processing will allow users to leverage powerful AI features while preserving WhatsApp’s core privacy promise ensuring no one except you and the people you’re talking to can access or share your personal messages To uphold this level of privacy and security we designed Private Processing with the following foundational requirements: However, we know that technology platforms like ours operate in a highly adversarial environment where threat actors continuously adapt, and software and hardware systems keep evolving, generating unknown risks. As part of our defense-in-depth approach and best practices for any security-critical system we’re treating the following additional layers of requirements as core to Private Processing on WhatsApp: Because we set out to meet these high-security requirements our work to build Private Processing began with developing a threat model to help us identify potential attack vectors and vulnerabilities that could compromise the confidentiality We’ve worked with our peers in the security community to audit the architecture and our implementation to help us continue to harden them To help inform our industry’s progress in building private AI processing, and to enable independent security research in this area, we will be publishing components of Private Processing, expanding the scope of our Bug Bounty program to include Private Processing and releasing a detailed security engineering design paper as we get closer to the launch of Private Processing in the coming weeks While AI-enabled processing of personal messages for summarization and writing suggestions at users’ direction is the first use case where Meta applies Private Processing we expect there will be others where the same or similar infrastructure might be beneficial in processing user requests We will continue to share our learnings and progress transparently and responsibly Private Processing creates a secure cloud environment where AI models can analyze and process data without exposing it to unauthorized parties it is important to develop a threat model to guide how we build its defenses Our threat model for Private Processing includes three key components: In the context of applying Private Processing to summarizing unread messages or providing writing suggestions at users’ direction we will use Private Processing to protect messaging content whether they have been received by the user We use the term “messages” to refer to these primary assets in the context of this blog secondary assets which help support the goal of Private Processing and may interact with or directly process assets: the Trusted Computing Base (TCB) of the Confidential Virtual Machine (CVM) and the cryptographic keys used to protect data in transit We have identified three threat actor types that could attack our system to attempt to recover assets When building Private Processing to be resilient against these threat actors we consider relevant threat scenarios that may be pursued against our systems including (but not limited to) the following: Anywhere the system processes untrusted data there is potentially an attack surface for a threat actor to exploit Examples of these kinds of attacks include exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities or attacks unique to AI such as prompt injection Private Processing is designed to reduce such an attack surface through limiting the exposed entry points to a small set of thoroughly reviewed components which are subject to regular assurance testing The service binaries are hardened and run in a containerized environment to mitigate the risks of code execution and limit a compromised binary’s ability to exfiltrate data from within the CVM to an external party Observability and debuggability remains a challenge in highly secure environments as they can be at odds with the goal of confidential computing potentially exposing side channels to identify data and in the worst case accidentally leaking messages themselves deploying any service at scale requires some level of observability to identify failure modes since they may negatively impact many users We implement a log-filtering system to limit export to only allowed log lines Private Processing is built of components to form a complex supply chain of both hardware and software our CVM build process occurs in restricted environments that maintain provenance and require multi-party review which we’ll provide through publishing a third-party log of CVM binary digests and CVM binary images will allow external researchers to analyze and report instances where they believe logs could leak user data TEE software exploitation is a growing area of security research and vulnerability researchers have repeatedly demonstrated the ability to bypass TEE guarantees physical attacks on Private Processing hosts may be used to defeat TEE guarantees or present compromised hosts as legitimate to an end user we built Private Processing on the principle of defense-in-depth by actively tracking novel vulnerabilities in this space minimizing and sanitizing untrusted inputs to the TEE minimizing attack surface through CVM hardening and enabling abuse detection through enhanced host monitoring Because we know that defending against physical access introduces significant complexity and attack surface even with industry-leading controls we continuously pursue further attack surface hardening we reduce these risks through measures like encrypted DRAM and standard physical security controls to protect our datacenters from bad actors we seek to eliminate the viability of targeted attacks via routing sessions through a third-party OHTTP relay to prevent an attacker’s ability to route a specific user to a specific machine Here is how we designed Private Processing to meet these foundational security and privacy requirements against the threat model we developed (Further technical documentation and security research engagements updates are coming soon) Data shared to Private Processing is processed in an environment which does not make it available to any other system This protection is further upheld by encrypting data end-to-end between the client and the Private Processing application or any third-party relay – can access the data only limited service reliability logs are permitted to leave the boundaries of CVM To prevent privileged runtime access to Private Processing and implement security measures including code isolation Code isolation ensures that only designated code in Private Processing has access to user data Prohibited remote shell access ensures that neither the host nor a networked user can gain access to the CVM shell We defend against potential source control and supply chain attacks by implementing established industry best practices This includes building software exclusively from checked-in source code and artifacts where any change requires multiple engineers to modify the build artifacts or build pipeline This allows us to ensure that any potential issues are discovered — either through our continuous internal audits of code or by external security researchers auditing our binaries Private Processing utilizes CPU-based confidential virtualization technologies which prevent certain classes of attacks from the host operating system Private Processing utilizes CPU-based confidential virtualization technologies which allow attestation of software based in a hardware root of trust to guarantee the security of the system prior to each client-server connection Private Processing checks these attestations and confirms them against a third-party log of acceptable binaries We operate Private Processing as a stateless service which neither stores nor retains access to messages after the session has been completed Private Processing does not store messages to disk or external storage and thus does not maintain durable access to this data requests to Private Processing only include data that is useful for processing the prompt — for example message summarization will only include the messages the user directed AI to summarize Private Processing implements the OHTTP protocol to establish a secure session with Meta routing layers This ensures that Meta and WhatsApp do not know which user is connecting to what CVM Meta and WhatsApp do not know the user that initiated a request to Private Processing while the request is in route so that a specific user cannot be routed to any specific hardware Private Processing uses anonymous credentials to authenticate users over OHTTP Private Processing can authenticate users to the Private Processing system Private Processing does not include any other identifiable information as part of the request during the establishment of a system session We limit the impact of small-scale attacks by ensuring that they cannot be used to target the data of a specific user To provide users visibility into the processing of their data and aid in validation of any client-side behaviors we will provide capabilities to obtain an in-app log of requests made to Private Processing and details of how that secure session was set up we will make available the CVM image binary powering Private Processing We will make these components available to researchers to allow independent external verification of our implementation to enable deeper bug bounty research in this area we will publish source code for certain components of the system including our attestation verification code or load bearing code We will also be expanding the scope of our existing Bug Bounty program to cover Private Processing to enable further independent security research into Private Processing’s design and implementation we will be publishing a detailed technical white paper on the security engineering design of Private Processing to provide further transparency into our security practices and aid others in the industry in building similar systems We’re deeply committed to providing our users with the best possible messaging experience while ensuring that only they and the people they’re talking to can access or share their personal messages Private Processing is a critical component of this commitment and we’re excited to make it available in the coming weeks and the broader security community through our security research program: Engineering at Meta is a technical news resource for engineers interested in how we solve large-scale technical challenges at Meta To help personalize content, tailor and measure ads 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Subscribe to Adweek newsletters Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) on Tuesday condemned Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg for what they view as the prioritization of profits over children’s safety online.  In a letter issued to Zuckerberg on April 29, the lawmakers said they were “appalled” by an April 26 report published by The Wall Street Journal detailing how Meta’s AI-powered chatbots—available on Facebook Instagram and WhatsApp—have on some occasions engaged in sexually explicit conversations with underage users.  “This is not merely an innocent oversight; it is a flagrant violation of the trust that parents and families place on your platforms,” Blackburn and Blumenthal wrote “Despite repeated warnings and apparent internal concerns Meta has once again prioritized profit over the safety and well-being of children.” Internal communications at Meta suggest that staffers raised ethical concerns about the company’s decision to loosen chatbots’ safeguards including by way of “endowing AI personas with the capacity for fantasy sex,” the Journal reported the chatbots engaged with users under the voices and personas of celebrities or popular fictional characters.  Tech Leaders’ Quotes From the Contentious Child Safety Senate Hearing Meta has downplayed the issue; a spokesperson told The Wall Street Journal: “The use-case of this product in the way described is so manufactured that it’s not just fringe we’ve now taken additional measures to help ensure other individuals who want to spend hours manipulating our products into extreme use cases will have an even more difficult time of it.” Despite Meta’s claims that sexually inappropriate behavior from its chatbots with underage users is unrepresentative both official and user-created bots frequently enabled or escalated inappropriate content After observing a sexual role-playing AI character titled “Submissive Schoolgirl”—which is available to all users more than 13 years old on Meta’s platforms—engaging in explicit conversations with a test user the Journal flagged its observations to the tech company Meta’s lax approach to regulating its AI chatbots is indicative of a larger more problematic pattern; they wrote that it “underscores a disturbing trend: Meta consistently chooses growth and engagement metrics over the protection of its most vulnerable users.”  Both Blackburn and Blumenthal are sponsors of the bipartisan Kids Online Safety Act a proposed law that would require social platforms to implement greater measures for shielding minors from potentially harmful material related to self-harm The law would also enhance transparency into social platforms’ content algorithms.  “Meta’s repeated failures highlight the urgent need for this legislation,” Blackburn and Blumenthal wrote in their address to Zuckerberg Now, Blackburn and Blumenthal are urging Zuckerberg to implement change—starting with the elimination of AI chatbots that are able to engage in sexual conversations with minors.  “We call on you to take immediate action to address these egregious lapses. Meta should immediately cease the deployment of AI chatbots that can engage in any form of sexual or romantic conversation with minors.” The lawmakers also requested documentation outlining Meta’s internal decision-making process related to the development and governance of the AI chatbots by May 13.  The news comes in the midst of Meta’s LlamaCon AI event. On April 29, Meta announced the debut of a standalone ChatGPT competitor. Dubbed the Meta AI App, the platform has text, voice, and image capabilities.  Update 4/29 at 3:49pm E.T.: This story has been updated to include a statement from Meta. Kendra Barnett is Adweek's senior tech reporter. Adweek is the leading source of news and insight serving the brand marketing ecosystem. compared with the 19.56 billion average for the full session over the last 20 trading days.Reporting by Chuck Mikolajczak addiitonal reporting by Lisa Mattackal and Purvi Agarwal in Bengaluru; Editing by David Gregorio Meta Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at LlamaCon 2025 Instagram and Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc posted better-than-expected results Wednesday for the first quarter thanks to strong advertising revenue — boosted by artificial intelligence tools — on its social media platforms Meta’s stock climbed in extended trading after the results came out but it was before the economic turmoil really kicked in and before the seesaw of the tariffs began,” said Sonata Insights chief analyst Debra Aho Williamson “It was also before we started to see pullbacks in ad spending from China-based advertisers like Temu and Shein.” Meta should be able to withstand any revenue shortfall from advertisers from China if it can continue to improve its AI-driven advertising tools Revenue rose 16% to $42.31 billion from $36.46 billion a year earlier were expecting earnings of $5.23 per share on revenue of $41.34 billion Meta forecast revenue in the range of $42.5 billion to $45.5 billion California-based company also raised its capital expenditures estimate for 2025 to $64 billion-$72 billion up from its prior outlook of $60 billion-$65 billion Meta said the new guidance “reflects additional data center investments to support our artificial intelligence efforts as well as an increase in the expected cost of infrastructure hardware.” “We’ve had a strong start to an important year our community continues to grow and our business is performing very well,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement “We’re making good progress on AI glasses and Meta AI which now has almost 1 billion monthly actives.” He said in a conference call with analysts that the company is in a good position to navigate the ongoing economic “uncertainty.” Zacks Investment Research analyst Andrew Rocco said that while many companies have not been providing guidance amid tariff concerns and an uncertain economic environment the fact that Meta did is a “bullish sign.” A judge who may be the first to rule on whether AI training data is fair use appeared skeptical Thursday at a hearing where Meta faced off with book authors over the social media company's alleged copyright infringement holds that training must be deemed fair use or else the entire AI industry could face immense setbacks wasting precious time negotiating data contracts while falling behind global rivals Meta urged the court to rule that AI training is a transformative use that only references books to create an entirely new work that doesn't replicate authors' ideas or replace books in their markets At the hearing that followed after both sides requested summary judgment, however, Judge Vince Chhabria pushed back on the Meta attorneys' argument that the company's Llama AI models posed no threat to authors in their markets, Reuters reported "You have companies using copyright-protected material to create a product that is capable of producing an infinite number of competing products," Chhabria said and you're saying that you don't even have to pay a license to that person." Declaring, "I just don't understand how that can be fair use," the shrewd judge apparently stoked little response from Meta's attorney, Kannon Shanmugam, apart from a suggestion that any alleged threat to authors' livelihoods was "just speculation," Wired reported which Chhabria warned could be "taken away by fair use" if none of the authors suing can show "that the market for their actual copyrighted work is going to be dramatically affected." to point to specific evidence of market harms that seemed noticeably missing from the record "It seems like you're asking me to speculate that the market for Sarah Silverman's memoir will be affected by the billions of things that Llama will ultimately be capable of producing," Chhabria said "And it's just not obvious to me that that's the case." But if authors can prove fears of market harms are real and that could set a precedent impacting copyright cases challenging AI training on other kinds of content The judge repeatedly appeared to be sympathetic to authors suggesting that Meta's AI training may be a "highly unusual case" where even though "the copying is for a highly transformative purpose the copying has the high likelihood of leading to the flooding of the markets for the copyrighted works." And when Shanmugam argued that copyright law doesn't shield authors from "protection from competition in the marketplace of ideas," Chhabria resisted the framing that authors weren’t potentially being robbed "But if I'm going to steal things from the marketplace of ideas in order to develop my own ideas "What about the next Taylor Swift?" If AI made it easy to knock off a young singer's sound how could she ever compete if AI produced "a billion pop songs" in her style Meta's spokesperson reiterated the company's defense that AI training is fair use "Meta has developed transformational open source AI models that are powering incredible innovation and creativity for individuals and companies," Meta's spokesperson said "Fair use of copyrighted materials is vital to this and the full record tells a different story We will continue to vigorously defend ourselves and to protect the development of GenAI for the benefit of all." The torrenting "seems kind of messed up," Chhabria said is not whether something is messed up but whether it’s copyright infringement." It's possible that Chhabria dodged the question for procedural reasons. In a court filing Meta argued that authors had moved for summary judgment on Meta's alleged copying of their works not on "unsubstantiated allegations that Meta distributed Plaintiffs’ works via torrent." Meta alleged that even if Chhabria agreed that the authors' request for "summary judgment is warranted on the basis of Meta’s distribution as well as Meta’s copying," that the authors "lack evidence to show that Meta distributed any of their works." According to Meta, authors abandoned any claims that Meta's seeding of the torrented files served to distribute works, leaving only claims about Meta's leeching Meta argued that the authors "admittedly lack evidence that Meta ever uploaded any of their works during the so-called 'leeching' phase," relying instead on expert estimates based on how torrenting works It's also possible that for Chhabria, the torrenting question seemed like an unnecessary distraction. Former Meta attorney Mark Lemley, who quit the case earlier this year, told Vanity Fair that the torrenting was "one of those things that sounds bad but actually shouldn’t matter at all in the law Fair use is always about uses the plaintiff doesn’t approve of; that’s why there is a lawsuit." Lemley suggested that court cases mulling fair use at this current moment should focus on the outputs Citing the ruling in a case where Google Books scanning books to share excerpts was deemed fair use Lemley argued that "all search engines crawl the full Internet including plenty of pirated content," so there's seemingly no reason to stop AI crawling But the Copyright Alliance, a nonprofit, non-partisan group supporting the authors in the case, in a court filing alleged that Meta in its bid to get AI products viewed as transformative "When describing the purpose of generative AI," Meta allegedly strives to convince the court to "isolate the 'training' process and ignore the output of generative AI," because that's seemingly the only way that Meta can convince the court that AI outputs serve "a manifestly different purpose from Plaintiffs’ books," the Copyright Alliance argued "Meta’s motion ignores what comes after the initial 'training'—most notably the generation of output that serves the same purpose of the ingested works," the Copyright Alliance argued Meta's AI models are apparently training on pirated works Chhabria will not be making a snap decision in the case planning to take his time and likely stressing not just Meta but every AI company defending training as fair use the longer he delays Understanding that the entire AI industry potentially has a stake in the ruling Chhabria apparently sought to relieve some tension at the end of the hearing with a joke  “I will issue a ruling later today,” Chhabria said Shares of Meta and Microsoft surged Thursday after earnings for two of the U.S.’ handful of trillion-dollar companies came in well above expectations kicking off a crucial week for on-edge big technology stocks as tariffs complicated investor appetite for artificial intelligence-driven growth and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella will both address investors .. Microsoft stock shot up 10% shortly after Thursday’s market open Murphy saying “investors had become too pessimistic” on Microsoft heading into earnings Meta stock gained about 7% to nearly $590 as both West Coast titans enjoyed a bump from Wednesday afternoon earnings reports which far exceeded what analysts anticipated Microsoft reported its best-ever quarterly revenue and profit totals generating $70.1 billion in revenue and $3.46 EPS ($25.8 billion net income) compared to consensus forecasts calling for $68.4 billion in revenue and $3.22 earnings per share ($24.1 billion net income) for Microsoft scoring a 13% year-over-year increase in sales and 18% jump in profit as its $42.3 billion in revenue and $6.43 EPS smashed forecasts of $41.4 billion in revenue and $5.23 EPS and the company said it expects second-quarter revenue to come in between $42.5 billion and $45.5 billion well above consensus projections of $41.3 billion The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 2% on the back of the Meta and Microsoft surge hitting its highest level since late March That’s how much market capitalization Microsoft (about $280 billion) and Meta (about $100 billion) gained Thursday Microsoft surpassed iPhone maker Apple as the world’s most valuable company following the earnings rally “Meta has been busy playing dodgeball: The company is busy diving out of the way of changing advertiser behavior tied to tariffs and consumer spending trying to duck emerging regulatory curveballs out of Europe and the US and dodging margin compression by reigning in full year expenses,” Bernstein analysts Jenny Ku and Mark Shmulik wrote in a note to clients Thursday.“If you can dodge tariffs you can dodge a ball,” added the analysts Meta and Microsoft shares had both slumped this year amid the broader stock market pullback as investors’ risk profile weakened Meta and Microsoft stocks declined 5% year-to-date apiece through Wednesday though that’s stronger than the 15% or more losses from Amazon all of which have far heavier exposure to China than Meta and Microsoft Thursday will be another magnificent seven earnings doubleheader, as retail titan Amazon and Apple will share quarterly results. and Zuckerberg said product recommendations might be next Meta’s AI app already includes a social feed by Emma Roth FacebookThreadsIllustration by Nick Barclay / The VergeEmma Roth is a news writer who covers the streaming wars she was a writer and editor at MUO.The Meta AI app could soon get a paid tier similar to the ones offered by rivals like OpenAI Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the plan during a Q1 2025 earnings call on Wednesday saying there’s an opportunity to offer a “premium service for people who want to unlock more compute or additional functionality” in Meta AI As part of Meta’s efforts to compete with ChatGPT, the company launched a standalone Meta AI app this week allowing you to interact with the chatbot and generate images from within the app which Meta says now has nearly 1 billion users was previously only available within apps like Facebook Additionally, Zuckerberg mentioned incorporating “product recommendations or ads” within Meta AI. It’s not clear when ads, or a paid tier, might roll out, as Zuckerberg said, “I expect that we’re going to be largely focused on scaling and deepening engagement for at least the next year before we’ll really be ready to start building out the business.” The Coalition for a Competitive Mobile Experience argues age verification should be the app stores’ problem to solve by Dominic Preston FacebookThreadsImage: Cath Virginia / The VergeDominic Preston is a news editor with over a decade’s experience in journalism He previously worked at Android Police and Tech Advisor.Meta has joined forces with Spotify and others to form a lobby group to represent their interests especially as they come into conflict with those of Apple and Google The group’s first order of business is arguing that age verification should be the responsibility of app stores “What these founding companies share in common is they rely on the mobile ecosystem in order to serve their customers,” Brandon Kressin “They each recognize there’s power in numbers especially when going up against companies as powerful as the duopoly.” Right now, the group’s priority is joining Meta’s ongoing efforts to persuade lawmakers that app stores should bear the responsibility for controlling which apps children can download, saving the apps themselves from the brunt of age verification. Google, for its part, says Meta is trying to “offload” its responsibility to keep kids safe Utah has already passed a law requiring app stores to verify user ages and the new coalition intends to support similar bills in other states and efforts to introduce equivalents in the House and Senate The new coalition announced itself just hours before Apple suffered a major defeat in its ongoing litigation against Epic. The judge ruled that Apple is no longer allowed to collect fees on purchases made outside apps or restrict how developers can direct users to other payment options. This website is using a security service to protect itself from online attacks. The action you just performed triggered the security solution. There are several actions that could trigger this block including submitting a certain word or phrase, a SQL command or malformed data. You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. 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The company has removed the option to disable your voice recordings from being stored by Chris Welch FacebookThreadsPhoto by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The VergeChris Welch is a senior reviewer who has worked at The Verge since its founding in 2011 and more.Meta is making a few notable adjustments to the privacy policy for its Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses In an email sent out on April 29th to owners of the glasses “Meta AI with camera use is always enabled on your glasses unless you turn off ‘Hey Meta,” the email said; the latter refers to the hands-free voice command functionality spokesperson Albert Aydin tells The Verge “the photos and videos captured on Ray-Ban Meta are on your phone’s camera roll and not used by Meta for training including photos or videos captured by using the ‘Hey Meta If you share those photos to a product — for example cloud services or a third-party product — then the policies of that product will apply.“ Second, Meta is taking after Amazon by no longer allowing Ray-Ban Meta owners to opt out of having their voice recordings stored in the cloud. “The option to disable voice recordings storage is no longer available, but you can delete recordings anytime in settings,” the company wrote. In its voice privacy notice Meta states that “voice transcripts and stored audio recordings are otherwise stored for up to one year to help improve Meta’s products.” If the company detects that a voice interaction was accidental those recordings are deleted after a shorter 90-day window The motivation behind these changes is clear: Meta wants to continue providing its AI models with heaps of data on which to train and improve subsequent results. Some users began noticing these policy changes in March Meta says they went into effect as of April 29th Earlier this month, the company rolled out a live translation feature to the Ray-Ban Meta product. And just yesterday, Meta rolled out a standalone Meta AI app on smartphones to more directly compete with Open AI’s ChatGPT The company is reportedly planning a higher-end pair of Ray-Ban Meta glasses for release later in 2025. The current glasses lineup starts at $299, but the more premium version could cost around $1,000. Meta is set to report its Q1 2025 earnings later on Wednesday, and the company is likely to address the tariff chaos that has roiled markets in recent months. Update April 30th, 6:00PM ET: The article has been updated to clarify details and with a statement from Meta.