Meta is at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity to talk about two things: Reels and AI. It's these two categories in which the platform giant faces the stiffest competition. Alvin Bowles, Meta’s VP of global business group, hit the ground running on Monday. “I had four client meetings this morning to talk about how AI can actually help them with their creative process,” Bowles said during an interview. 

Meta is promoting new ways that AI can help generate ads and assist in media buying. The emphasis on AI has become a tech and advertising obsession, and companies up and down the Croisette are touting new possibilities for AI to help conceive ads and plan campaigns. “Right now, if we’re talking about where we are putting our efforts in, from an AI use of tools, it would be on the media side,” Bowles said.

Meta has a lot on its plate. The company has been developing AI for years, and it’s been a core part of its strategy. But in recent months OpenAI, with ChatGPT and DALL-E, captured public attention, leading to a profound shift in what AI can do. Microsoft made a big bet on OpenAI and installed ChatGPT throughout its business, including within Bing. ChatGPT, a text-generating machine, has a deep understanding of human language, and it can expound on almost any topic, even though it gets plenty wrong. Image-generator DALL-E allows people to input a prompt for an image and then receive AI-generated output within seconds. 

Also read: Meta adds generative AI into its ad platform

Now, Meta, Google, Amazon and others are racing to launch AI products with the same tools for consumers, creators and advertisers. On Meta, that could look like chatbots that advertisers use to gin up hundreds of versions of ads, and then use machine learning to target those ads.

Chatbots are also making a comeback as a concept for Messenger and WhatsApp so brands could provide customer support. In 2016, when Meta was still known as Facebook, it tried to make chatbots a popular way for brands to talk with customers. But the messenger-based bots never quite took off as a revolution in marketing. With smarter AI, that could change. Chatbots could also help companies do work internally, Bowles said.

“‘Send an email to all my direct reports.’ The bot can do that,” Bowles said. “Or you’re flying an airline and you got screwed on one flight. Instead of actually being on hold and talking to somebody, you can actually go through their AI assistant. That’s all AI-generated, to be able to get to a decision of: ‘OK. I am rebooked. Am I confirmed? Do I have a seat? All of that’s AI.”

Nicola Mendelsohn, Meta’s head of global business group, announced the development of Meta’s AI assistants at Cannes today. The assistants were positioned as a way for businesses to talk with customers, but also with the potential for creators to talk with fans.

“You can imagine a world where creators and public figures will be able to make their own AIs for generating content or engaging with fans, and so will businesses, with everything from basic customer support bots all the way up to more distinctive AIs for major brands,” read Meta’s announcement.

Meta has not revealed an exact timeline for most of its advanced generative AI concepts presented at Cannes. Meta has incorporated AI into ad products such as Advantage+, which automates campaigns and targets them. In May, Meta announced its AI Sandbox, and at the time said a “small group of advertisers” were testing generative AI to create multiple versions of ads, testing them and refining the campaigns.

In the more exploratory phase, Meta is working on AI media editing tools, the company said in its announcement today. The idea is a brand could take an existing video ad and apply AI to repurpose it, say, to match the season.

Meta also discussed AI-generated stickers as a medium for brands to create ads. Users could tell AI within Messenger to design a sticker that could be applied to messages, and now Meta is talking about how brands could get their images in that creation process.

Also read: How AI would judge Cannes Lions entries

Beyond AI

Meta is also out at Cannes promoting its plan to serve more ads into Reels, its answer to TikTok. That comes as TikTok continues to capture consumer and brand attention. The hot app has changed the way people create videos on social media, leading Meta, Google, Snap and others to follow its model. Meta has said Reels is taking off as a format for consumption, but it doesn't yet drive ad revenue the same way as ads in feeds and other videos.

“They absolutely are a bellwether on how people are actually consuming media on their phones, so it would be silly to suggest that they’re not having an impact, they certainly are,” Bowles said of TikTok. “But I think that it’s about expanding the pie as opposed to it being extremely competitive. We’re just such a larger business than they are, and we’ve got a lot more choice.”

Bowles specifically referenced Meta’s brand safety initiatives as one of Meta’s strong suits. Meta has been developing advanced tools to let brands control where ads run, making sure they don’t have any unsuitable content next to them. Meta has had years of dealing with brands concerned about offensive behavior on the platform that could bump up against ads. AI is actually helping with that, too, according to Meta.

Brand safety is coming up across Cannes discussions this week, and Meta is pointing to expanded “inventory filters,” which were rolled out earlier this year. Meta said it would add brand suitability verification, which is where third parties potentially verify that ads ran in safe locales, to Reels ads. Meta has been working with the verification firm Zefr for this initiative.