Meta Platforms Inc. , the social media powerhouse behind Facebook, is intensifying its focus on voice-activated AI technologies. As reported by the Financial Times, the company plans to enhance voice functionalities in the upcoming iteration of its Llama AI, designated Llama 4. Meta anticipates that the future of AI-driven agents will be primarily conversational rather than reliant on text. Over the past two years, Meta has heavily invested in AI, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealing plans to allocate up to $65 billion by 2025 to strengthen its AI capabilities. The firm aims to extend its AI functionality beyond social media, contemplating the launch of premium subscription services for its AI assistant, Meta AI, to perform tasks like making reservations and generating videos. Meta's advancement in voice-activated AI comes amid competition from other tech leaders, such as OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google, which are all eager to commercialize AI technologies and monetize them. The company is also considering integrating paid advertising or sponsored posts into the search outcomes of its AI assistant. The enhancement of Meta’s AI voice features has been a priority, with intentions to facilitate more natural, two-way interactions between users and the AI model.

Meta envisions users being able to interrupt the AI, resulting in a more fluid conversation as opposed to a strict format of questions and answers. Chris Cox, Meta’s chief product officer, characterized the forthcoming Llama 4 as an "omni model" that can process native speech without needing to convert voice into text. He views the capability to converse with the internet and pose any question as a transformative feature that is still being developed. The company is also evaluating regulatory measures surrounding its AI models, including the latest Llama iteration, pondering whether to ease restrictions on the AI's outputs. Meta’s commitment to voice-driven AI fits into its larger strategy of creating lightweight devices, such as Ray-Ban smart glasses, aimed at supplanting smartphones as primary computing tools for consumers. The firm regards voice interaction as a crucial aspect of these devices. As noted by PYMNTS recently, Clara Shih, Meta’s head of business AI, aims to provide agentic AI solutions to "hundreds of millions" of businesses. “We’re rapidly approaching a future where every business, from large to small, will have an AI agent representing it and operating on its behalf, emulating its voice—similar to how businesses currently maintain websites and email addresses. ” Shih aspires to enhance accessibility for small businesses that predominantly depend on Facebook pages or websites to attract and interact with customers. “Before long, these businesses will have AIs that can represent them, automate repetitive tasks, communicate in their voice, assist in acquiring more customers, and offer a kind of concierge service to each of their customers around the clock. ”