Amid shares plunging in the tech giant allegedly over its spending on Artificial Intelligence, the CEO told investors for the firm's first-quarter earnings meeting that it will be the largest "undertaking" for any new technology they've invested in.

He said: “Historically, investing to build these new scaled experiences in our apps has been a very good long-term investment for us and for investors who have stuck with us.

“And the initial signs are quite positive here, too. But building the leading AI will also be a larger undertaking than the other experiences we’ve added to our apps, and this is likely going to take several years.

Already, millions of people have used Meta AI, its intelligent assistant that is capable of complex reasoning, following instructions, visualising ideas, and solving nuanced problems, since it launched last week.

And although it's free, Zuckerberg sees many avenues to make money from AI.

He explained: “There are several ways to build a massive business here, including scaling business messaging, introducing ads or paid content into AI interactions, and enabling people to pay to use bigger AI models and access more compute.

“And on top of those, AI is already helping us improve app engagement, which naturally leads to seeing more ads and improving ads directly to deliver more value.”