Zuckerberg AI ad casts Meta’s future as a bet on people

A new Zuckerberg AI ad is trying to sell Meta’s next phase with an old message: technology can bring people closer together. Mark Zuckerberg posted the short video Thursday as Meta faces wider public concern over artificial intelligence, including worries about jobs, data centers and trust in AI products, Fortune reported.

Zuckerberg wrote that as the company enters “this next wave with AI,” it still believes “the future is for everyone.” In the video, a narrator says critics can call the company optimists or dreamers, adding, “call us whatever the hell you want,” before saying Meta is betting on people.

The spot uses scenes of people recording and sharing personal moments through Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook and Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses. Fortune described the montage as built around concerts, snowboarding, children laughing and family connection, with calm music and a message that Meta’s AI push continues the promise Facebook made 22 years ago.

What is Zuckerberg’s AI ad about?

The ad presents Meta’s artificial intelligence work as another tool for connection, rather than as a replacement for people. It does not detail specific AI products or address how AI will change work, privacy or the experience of using Meta’s platforms.

Marketing scholars told Fortune that the approach appears designed to soften anxiety about AI by returning viewers to memories of early social media. Mara Einstein, a media studies professor at CUNY’s Queens College, told Fortune that the video shows people enjoying themselves but does not answer the central question of how AI will affect users once Meta builds more of the technology into its services.

Einstein said AI differs from earlier social media tools Meta used to connect people. That distinction, she told Fortune, makes the nostalgic framing less responsive to the concerns now surrounding the technology.

Ana Babic Rosario, a marketing professor at the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business, told Fortune that Meta seems to be asking viewers to judge its AI plans through the company’s original Facebook identity rather than its recent record. She said the video’s language and imagery recall an earlier period when Facebook positioned itself as a way to connect friends and family.

Why is Meta using nostalgia now?

Fortune reported that Meta is dealing with several AI-related controversies. Last week, employees sued the company, alleging it used AI in recent layoffs of 8,000 workers in a way that disproportionately affected employees on medical, parental or family leave. Fortune also reported that workers in Meta’s Applied AI unit compared conditions to a “gulag” and called the work “soul crushing.”

The company has also ended an AI-generated images pilot on Instagram and faces litigation involving its Ray-Ban Meta glasses, according to Fortune. Rosario told the publication that the ad’s nostalgia moves attention away from more contested arguments about AI.

Jannine Lasaleta, a Yeshiva University professor who studies nostalgia and consumer behavior, told Fortune that nostalgia can make an AI-driven product feel more human because AI is often viewed as artificial or unreal. She said invoking familiar platforms from the past can promote a sense of social connection.

Tech leaders are softening their AI job warnings

Meta’s ad arrives as other AI leaders have also shifted how they discuss the technology’s labor impact, Fortune reported. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have both recently moderated earlier warnings about AI-driven job losses.

Altman said in June 2025 that AI could progress from an intern-like tool to something closer to an experienced software engineer, according to Fortune. He later said he was “delighted” to be wrong that entry-level white-collar jobs would have been hit harder by now.

Amodei, who had warned that AI could eliminate half of white-collar jobs, later argued that automation may expand remaining work because it removes parts of jobs rather than entire roles, Fortune reported. Those shifts come as some white-collar workers resist company AI tools and protests against AI data centers grow across the United States.

This story draws on original reporting from Fortune.