Meta Tells Its Metaverse Workers to Use AI to ‘Go 5X Faster’

Meta’s leadership is pushing hard on AI adoption among its metaverse teams, with Vishal Shah, the company’s VP of Metaverse, urging employees to use AI tools to speed up their work five times over. In an internal message obtained by 404 Media, Shah emphasized that the goal isn’t just a minor efficiency gain of 5%, but a massive 5X leap in productivity. He called this approach "Metaverse AI4P" — AI for Productivity — and stressed that AI should become a daily habit rather than a novelty. This means everyone, from engineers to product managers and designers, should be using AI to build prototypes, fix bugs, and speed up workflows. Shah’s message highlighted the need to integrate AI deeply into all major codebases and workflows. He painted a vision of a future where ideas can be prototyped rapidly and feedback can be received in hours, not weeks. Despite Meta's massive investments in the metaverse, the product has been a significant drain on time and resources, with few users engaging with it so far. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has predicted that AI agents will be writing most of Meta's code within the next year to year and a half, and the company recently allowed job candidates to use AI during coding tests. However, this AI push has stoked some fears among workers. There’s a growing concern that employees are being expected not only to accept AI but to dramatically boost their output with it, implying that human-only work isn’t good enough anymore. This pressure reflects a broader trend among tech giants: for example, Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy also recently warned that AI-driven efficiency gains will likely mean job cuts in the near future. A related issue raised by coders is the quality and maintainability of AI-generated code. Many engineers feel like babysitters, having to untangle and fix buggy, poorly documented AI-written code, which has been dubbed "vibe coding." This phenomenon has led to blogs criticizing the new wave of AI-driven development for creating technical debt and comprehension challenges, making it harder to trust and maintain software. Despite these challenges, Shah expects rapid adoption of AI within Meta’s metaverse teams, aiming for 80% of employees to be using AI by the end of the year. He mentioned upcoming training sessions and "Metaverse day of AI learning" events designed to boost skills and comfort with AI tools. His final message encouraged teams to dedicate time, experiment, and share their learnings, framing the productivity leap not as a small tweak but as a fundamental rethink of how work is done. A Meta spokesperson confirmed that AI integration is a top priority and that the company is focused on using AI to assist employees in their everyday tasks. This aligns with a broader industry push where companies are increasingly embedding AI into workflows to stay competitive, despite the challenges and uncertainties about the long-term effects on jobs and code quality.