The company has confirmed that Meta has removed several of its AI-generated profiles from Facebook to Instagram after the AI-generated characters sparked widespread outrage and ridicule from users on social media.
AI-generated profiles labeled “AI driven by Meta” were launched in implemented together with celebrity-branded AI chatbots (). It appears Meta hasn't updated any of these profiles for months, and the pages appear to have gone unnoticed until this week, after an interview was published Financial Times with Meta's VP of Generative AI Connor Hayes.
In the interview, Hayes described the company's goal to eventually populate its services with AI-generated profiles that can interact with people and function “much like accounts.” These comments brought attention to existing AI profiles created by fMeta, and users weren't exactly impressed with what they found.
With nicknames like “hellograndpabrian”, a supposed “retired textile businessman who's always learning” and “datingwithCarter”, a faux “dating coach”, the chatbots were supposed to demonstrate “unique interests and personalities” to the users they were with. could communicate. Their Instagram profiles also featured AI-generated posts that, as 404 Media I noticed it looks very similar it has become common in many corners of Facebook.
An AI named “Liv” caused particular outrage. On her Instagram profile, “Liv” is described as a “proud black queer mom of two and truth teller.” Washington Post Columnist Karen Attia posted a series of screenshots of herself asking “Liv” about and “Liv” said it was created by a “predominantly white team.” This was reported by independent journalist Mady Castigan. in which “Liv” revealed that its creators were partially inspired by Sofia Vergara's character from Modern familya character who is neither queer nor black.
“There is confusion: recent Financial Times The article was about our vision of AI characters existing on our platforms over time, without announcing any new product,” a spokesperson told Engadget. “The accounts shown are from a test we ran at Connect in 2023. They were controlled by humans and were part of an early experiment we did with AI characters.”
In addition to causing ridicule for their responses and attempts to appropriate marginalized identities, users found that AI profiles could not be blocked for unknown reasons. Instead of solving the problem, Meta decided to stop the experiment completely. “We have identified a bug that was preventing people from blocking these AIs,” the spokesperson said, “and are removing these accounts to resolve the issue.”
Even though that test run failed, the company doesn't seem to be abandoning its plans to add more AI-generated “characters” to its apps. Earlier this year the company teased capable of conducting realistic video calls. Creators can your own chatbots that will respond to subscribers on their behalf. Meta has also begun experimenting with inserting its own AI-generated images into Facebook users' feeds.
In an interview last year, Hayes told me that Meta would likely become more “active” in distributing AI-generated content over time, likening it to moving away from showing recommended content instead of posts from people you follow.
“In the early days of social apps… the content you could see on a given day was sort of limited to who you followed or were friends with. And over the last five or six years, many apps, including us, have moved to relax that restriction and start recommending content from accounts you don't follow.
“I think the next leap that's going to happen is loosening the restrictions on what people can create and actually moving to streams of content that are a combination of things that you know have been created by humans, but are also entirely created by machines . is generated.”
It may still be some time before the Meta fully realizes this vision. But if the response to early experiments is any indication, the company still has a lot of work to do to convince people that AI characters are worth interacting with in the first place.