According to Facebook-turned-Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, the company's metaverse of dead-eyed avatars has been all but abandoned by Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg -- who, in an added blow, is instead said to be spending the bulk of his time chasing the investor-appeasing Silicon Valley squirrel that is generative AI. "We've been investing in artificial intelligence for over a decade, and have one of the leading research institutes in the world," Bosworth told Nikkei Asia in an interview on Wednesday. "We certainly have a large research organization, hundreds of people." "We just created a new team, the generative AI team, a couple of months ago; they are very busy," he added. That sound you just heard in the distance? A single, pixelated tear, hitting the deserted Horizon Worlds' floor.

The news leaked out, creating a wave that will soon become a tsunami with new layoffs and a change in the existing setting, but also an upheaval of future plans since Zuckerberg abandoned Metaverse. There was no major announcement or press release. There were just a few subtle signs that the metaverse was no longer Meta's top goal, hidden in blog postings and earnings calls. A shift in artificial intelligence has already succeeded the king of our future: Metaverse. After the big announcement, at the company's annual Connect conference in October 2021, Zuckerberg explained how his firm planned to create a new version of the internet as well as the company's renaming from Facebook to Meta.