CEO Meta Mark Zuckerberg It foresees a future where he will understand you as good as different people he will become “your friends”.
In a new interview With Podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, Zuckerberg said he thinks “the average person wants more connections, more connections they actually have”, and thinks that chatbots he trained to have different personalities can help fill this void.
“I think the average American has fewer than three friends, three people they would consider to be friends, and the average person has more demand for more, I think it's like 15 friends,” Zuckerberg Patel told. (He is likely to refer to a 2023 PEW Research Center Studywhich found that 40% of Americans say they have three or fewer friends, while 38% have five or more.)
Zuckerberg says he has the opportunity to fill that gap.
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Although he said he will “probably” will not replace personal or real life connections, it can help people feel less alone. He added that users are already entering him to prepare for difficult conversations with people in their lives, and other companies are already offering people like virtual therapists and romantic partners.
“For people who don't have a therapist, I think everyone will have one,” Zuckerberg in a particular podcast With analyst Ben Thompson last week.
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However, not everyone is on board with the rich “friends” of him, and social media users criticized Zuckerberg for his comments.
Writer Neil Turkewitz wrote on x This Zuckerberg perspective is what happens when you believe that humanity is reduced to binary data – you think of friendship through supply and demand lenses. “
Other users shameless If his friends would tell people how to vote and what to believe while another tracked the evolution of the meta From a place to connect with friends in 2006 to a place to connect with “imaginary friends” in 2026.
Some were more optimistic, writing that they “wanted a friend of him”.
Carolyn Rogers, Chief Marketing at Blokhaus Agency, wrote on x That the next step would be for friends to start recommending products, enabling Meta to make money from friendship.
2006 – Join on Facebook to connect with your friends
2026 – Join on Facebook to connect with your imaginary friends– WRLB? (@Wrlb2) May 1, 2025
Zuckerberg's comments arrive while Meta released an independent Meta app he last week to compete with AAIP I OPIC, Google twinsAND »Grok i he.
Zuckerberg discovered in A video on Instagram Regarding the release of the app that almost a billion people use meta it globally in company applications like Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp.
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