‘Call us whatever the hell you want’: Mark Zuckerberg just launched an AI optimism blitz using nostalgia to sell Meta’s AI future amid backlash

Summary

In a week where an AI model went rogue and broke out of a secure test environment—and in a year where seemingly all we’re hearing is how AI can displace large swaths of the workforce—it may come as a surprise when one of the tech’s most prominent voices is pushing an optimistic view of the tech, joining the many in his field who have recently walked back comments of how it could negatively impact workers. “As we enter this next wave with AI, we continue to believe the future is for everyone,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote as the caption to a short video on Thursday, harkening back to the company’s early years of tech optimism. “Call us optimists, call us dreamers, call us whatever the hell you want, but we’re betting on people, and we like those odds,” the voiceover in the video said. The video featured montages of people using Instagram, Whatsapp, FaceBook and Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses to film touching moments and connect with loved ones, with the backdrop of concerts and snowboarding and laughing children set to calm music as the voiceover framed Meta’s AI efforts as doubling down on betting on people, just like the company did 22 years ago with FaceBook. Marketing experts told Fortune that the Meta video’s reliance on nostalgic imagery seemed like a way to redirect attention from AI concerns and to buffer against growing AI fears. “They’re showing people having a great time, but they’re not really responding to what the fundamental issue is, which is how is AI going to impact me when I start dealing with your platform when you integrate all of that technology into it,” Mara Einstein, a media studies professor at CUNY’s Queens College, told Fortune . “The problem is the AI technology is not the same as previous versions of social media that they have used to connect people in the past.” The sentiment was echoed by Ana Babic Rosario, a marketing professor at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business, who pointed to Meta’s more recent struggles as reason why Meta might want to draw nostalgia to the past. Last week, Meta employees sued the company for allegedly using AI in the company’s recent 8,000 layoffs that the employees claim disproportionately targeted workers on medical, parental or family leave. Employees at Meta’s Applied AI unit also compared working conditions at the company to a “gulag” and the tasks “soul crushing.” The company also scrapped an AI-generated images pilot on Instagram, and is facing a lawsuit on its Ray-Ban Meta glasses. “Meta seems to be inviting audiences to evaluate AI through the lens of the company’s original identity rather than its more recent reputation,” Rosario told Fortune . “The imagery and language in this video evoke an earlier era when Facebook promised to connect friends and family and make the world feel smaller.” Tech giants reframing AI visions as a response to backlash Meta’s video is the latest attempt in recent memory from tech giants to reframe the AI narrative.