In this photo illustration, the Threads logo is displayed on a cell phone in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, on September 4, 2024.
Mauro Pimentel | AFP | Getty Images
Meta on Wednesday debuted an AI feature called “Dear Algo” that lets Threads users personalize their content-recommendation algorithms.
Threads users will be able to tell the Dear Algo tool what kinds of posts they want to see similar to how people use written prompts to interact with chat bots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
The feature is the latest example of how Meta is continuing to incorporate artificial intelligence into its various apps like Threads. The social media company on Tuesday also released AI features for its Facebook service that let users animate their profile photos and alter other images with the Meta AI digital assistant.
Meta last month told investors that it plans to spend between $115 billion and $135 billion this year on AI-related capital expenditures. That’s nearly double the amount of capex that Meta spent last year when it overhauled its AI unit.
Dear Algo is the latest addition to Threads, the micro-blogging platform that Meta launched in July 2023 to compete against Twitter, which is now called X and was part of the merger between Elon Musk’s xAI and SpaceX earlier this month.
Last month, Meta said Threads had 400 million monthly active users and would begin rolling out ads globally. CEO Mark Zuckerberg in January also told analysts that Meta plans to debut and test new AI products and features in 2026 as the company continues to spend big on data center and related computing infrastructure.
To use the new tool, Threads users have to to craft a public post on the platform that begins with the phrase “Dear Algo” and then explains the kind of content they want to see more or less of.
A spokesman for the company said Meta was inspired by a trend of people publicly sharing posts that included the phrase “Dear Algo,” a company spokesperson told CNBC.
“Once you share your request, Dear Algo adjusts your feed for three days, so you can stay connected to the most current conversations,’ Meta said in a blog post. “You can also repost someone else’s Dear Algo request to apply their content preferences to your own feed.”
Meta said that it will begin testing Dear Algo with users in the U.S., U.K., Australia and New Zealand before rolling it out to more countries at later dates.
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