During this week’s second quarter earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors that AI tools are speeding up how his teams build software, pointing to recent launches including a new app for Marketplace sellers, a standalone Facebook Groups app, an AI-assisted gaming app, a fresh photos app from Instagram, and a bedtime story experiment powered by AI. Meta previously ran internal incubators, including Creative Labs and NPE Team, which produced apps like Slingshot, Rooms, Paper, Moments, Riff, Bump, Aux, Move, Spark, CatchUp, E.gg, Venue, Hotline, Super, Tuned, and BARS, but none became lasting hits and were shut down. This time, Meta points to Threads as its clearest success story, which now has 500 million monthly users. Meta pushed Threads to users across Facebook and Instagram from the start, but AI played a role too. Chief Financial Officer Susan Li told investors that large language models drive meaningful gains in content recommendations by understanding what content is about and helping engineers check content quality, spot emerging trends, and test ranking changes. Li also shared that every single Reel and Feed post on Instagram now passes through an AI model that checks the topic and tone of each post.