Facebook CEO Tom Ellison announced that Meta is changing the algorithm for video recommendations in Reels, Groups, and Facebook’s main feed, using artificial intelligence to improve the recommendation algorithm. The world’s largest social network has already migrated its short video recommendation engine Reels to the new one and plans to use it in all Facebook places that show videos — Facebook’s main feed and groups. This is part of the «technology roadmap» by 2026.
Meta has made competing with TikTok a priority since the app, known for its powerful recommendation engine, began to grow rapidly in the US, transmits Engadget. When Facebook tested a new AI-powered recommendation engine in Reels, it saw a roughly 8-10 percent increase in browsing time, Allison said:
This shows that the new model architecture (which learns from data) is much more efficient than the previous generation. So this is a good sign that says we are on the right track.
Until now, Facebook has used different video recommendation engines for Reels, Groups, and the Facebook feed. But after the success of Reels, the company plans to use the same AI-powered engine for all of these products.
Instead of just powering Reels, we’re working on a project to power our entire video ecosystem with this single model, and then we can add our Feed recommendation product to be powered by this model as well. If we do this right, not only will the recommendations become more interesting and relevant, but we think they will also improve their response rate.
— Alison says.
The move is part of Meta’s strategy to integrate AI into all of its products after the technology exploded with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022.