In a bold internal directive that’s rippling through Silicon Valley, Meta Platforms Inc. has ordered its metaverse division to integrate artificial intelligence across all workflows, aiming to turbocharge development by fivefold. The memo, penned by Vishal Shah, Meta’s vice president of metaverse, demands that employees leverage AI tools to “go 5x faster” in building virtual reality products—a stark admission of the unit’s ongoing struggles amid ballooning costs and tepid user adoption.
The announcement, first revealed by 404 Media and echoed across tech outlets, comes at a pivotal moment for Meta’s ambitious metaverse vision. Since rebranding from Facebook in 2021, the company has poured over $50 billion into Reality Labs, its XR (extended reality) arm, yet Horizon Worlds—the flagship metaverse platform—has languished with fewer than 300,000 monthly active users as of mid-2025. Shah’s message underscores a “AI-first” ethos, requiring 80% of the division’s roughly 10,000 employees to embed generative AI into daily routines by year’s end. This includes using tools like Meta’s own Llama models for code generation, content creation, and prototyping VR environments, effectively transforming engineers from manual coders to AI-orchestrators.
At the heart of this mandate is CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s unwavering belief in AI’s transformative power. In a recent podcast, he forecasted that by 2025, AI would match mid-level engineers in coding proficiency, reshaping software development entirely. “We’re not just using AI to go 5x faster; it’s about reimagining how we build,” Shah wrote, urging teams to experiment aggressively. Early adopters report gains: AI-assisted design has slashed VR asset creation time from weeks to days, while natural language prompts now generate complex simulations that once demanded specialized teams.
Yet, the push isn’t without controversy. Critics, including anonymous Meta insiders on platforms like Blind, decry it as a veiled efficiency drive amid layoffs that have already trimmed 20% of Reality Labs staff since 2023. “It’s code for ‘do more with less,’” one engineer posted, highlighting fears of burnout and skill atrophy as AI handles rote tasks. Broader industry watchers see parallels to Amazon’s AI quotas for warehouse workers or Google’s Bard integrations, signaling a corporate race where human ingenuity bows to algorithmic speed.
For the metaverse ecosystem, the implications are seismic. If successful, Meta could accelerate rollouts like AI-powered avatars and collaborative virtual spaces, potentially revitalizing interest ahead of the 2026 Quest 4 headset launch. Competitors like Apple and Microsoft, already blending AI into their Vision Pro and Mesh platforms, may follow suit, intensifying the arms race in immersive tech.
Ultimately, Meta’s AI mandate reflects a high-wire act: harnessing silicon smarts to salvage a human-centric dream. As Shah implores, “Embrace it or get left behind.” In 2025’s AI-saturated landscape, this isn’t just a policy—it’s a survival imperative, forcing workers to evolve or risk obsolescence in the very worlds they’re building.
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