SPOTLIGHTMeta wants you to pay for AI while still watching ads  While the debate on whether a slowdown of AI development will do us any good continues to rage on, Meta is keeping its eyes on its goal of AI monetization. It just launched an AI subscription service globally for its social media apps, which would give users access to premium features of its AI product. Plans start at US$6.7 per month in Singapore, with Meta providing additional features for businesses and creators in more advanced plans. The caveat? Paid subscribers still have to tolerate the ads on the platform, no matter which plan they purchase. I don't expect that to land well with most. For comparison, Singapore subscribers are paying US$20 for ChatGPT Plus and US$22.8 for Gemini Pro, though both offer an ad-free experience. However, it's a sound business choice from Meta's point of view, as the company knows all too well it cannot risk irking advertisers. Its ad business raked in US$59.4 billion in revenue last quarter, and it continues to be the company's bread and butter. Meta is optimistic that this subscription service will be a new revenue driver after having attracted 15 million users during its soft launch in the past few months. But will the rest of Meta's users bite? OpenAI did a consumer play for three years before going all-in with enterprise users, showing just how much work it takes to make the rest of the world pay for AI. And who can forget the infamous Horizon Worlds, a costly metaverse bet that led to nothing for Meta. Still, the company does have three billion active users across its apps. With that access, Meta has one less step to take to get them to subscribe. | 
