According to a MarketsandMarkets report, the conversational AI market—valued at $13.2 billion in 2024—is expected to expand to $49.9 billion by 2030, growing at 24.9% CAGR.

Despite a major usage and monetization gap, Meta, like many AI companies, is going all in on AI chatbots -- even giving them the ability to strike up a conversation with you, unprompted.

Indeed, an AI chatbot could even exhibit novel discoveries about the basis of consciousness in humans—as I believe they will—but it would not mean that that particular AI felt anything.