Just over a year ago, Meta created Facebook and Instagram profiles for “28 AIs with unique interests and personalities that you can interact with and delve deeper into your interests.” Today, the last of those profiles are being deleted amid waves of viral disgust as word of their existence has spread online.
The September 2023 launch of Meta's social profiles for AI characters was announced alongside a much splashier initiative that simultaneously created animated AI chatbots with celebrity avatars. These celebrity-based AI chatbots were unceremoniously scrapped less than a year later due to widespread lack of interest.
But about a dozen of the unrelated AI character profiles were still accessible this morning via social media pages labeled “AI managed by Meta.” These profiles – which Meta says contain a mix of AI-generated images and human-generated content – also offered real users the ability to chat live with these AI characters via Instagram Direct or Facebook Messenger.
Now that we know it exists, we hate it
The AI-generated character account page of “Mama Liv,” as it appeared on Instagram Friday morning.
Over the past few months, these profiles have continued to exist in a kind of benign neglect, with few new posts and less organic interest from other Meta users. However, that started to change last week, after the Financial Times published a report on Meta's vision of “social media filled with AI-generated users.”
As Meta VP Product for Generative AI Connor Hayes told FT: “We expect that over time these AIs will actually exist on our platforms, much in the same way accounts do… They will have bios and profile pictures and be able are to generate and share AI-powered content on the platform. That's where we see all of this going.”
