• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, 7 hours ago

Meta Platforms is seeking content deals with publishers such as Axel Springer, Fox Corp. and News Corp., which seems to support its push into artificial intelligence (AI) products like chatbots, as well as smart glasses, with a wristband controller.

The goal -- to license content such as news articles, images, music, and exclusive videos -- represents a shift from its recent efforts to reduce the prominence of news content on its platforms. With tools such as chatbots and smart glasses that goal has changed.

Meta has held discussions in recent months with a number of media companies about licensing their articles for use in its AI tools, reports The Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.

This expands on its multi-year AI content-licensing deal with Reuters signed last year.

The company shut down its dedicated Facebook News tab in the U.K., France and Germany in 2023, followed by the U.S. and Australia in early April 2024. 

A change in direction in Meta’s decision to give less priority to news led to declines in traffic from Facebook for many publishers, according to the WSJ. Some publishers in recent months said they have seen an uptick in traffic from the platform.

While other companies may want the publisher content to help train models, other reasons have surfaced for the use of content and reintroduction of more news content in Facebook feeds that link to many of the features in the company's next-generation smart glasses.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday unveiled the company’s next-generation wearable device.

The smart glasses have a small display inside the lens, giving Meta a place to serve up content from deals with publishers.

It represents a step forward to give consumers less reasons to look down at a screen and more reasons to look straight ahead -- not only for publisher content but messages, photos and more.

The Meta Ray-Ban Display should enable the company to build on its early success for its original Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses. Reports suggest it sold millions of pairs of with EssilorLuxottica, its eyewear partner.

The Meta Ray-Ban Display comes equipped with an AI assistant, as well as cameras, speakers, and microphones. The glasses let users connect to the cloud to access the internet and social media apps.