Meta has nuked a group of its AI-generated profiles from Facebook Instagram, the company confirmed, after the AI characters prompted widespread outrage and derision from users on social media.
AI-generated profiles, labeled “AI powered by Meta,” have been launched which is being released alongside the company's celebrity-branded AI chatbots (). Meta doesn't seem to have updated any of these profiles in months, and the pages seemed to go largely unnoticed until this week, following an interview published by Financial Times with Meta's VP of Generative AI, Connor Hayes.
In the interview, Hayes talked about the company's goal to eventually populate its services with AI-generated profiles that can interact with people and function “in the same way that accounts do.” Those comments drew attention to existing AI profiles created by fMeta and, well, users weren't exactly impressed with what they found.
With handles like “hellograndpabrian,” a supposed “retired textile entrepreneur who's always learning” and “datingwithCarter,” an AI “dating coach,” the chatbots are intended to reveal “unique interests and personalities ” for users to chat. On Instagram, their profiles also featured AI-generated posts that, as 404 Media mentioned, it looks like a lot that has become widespread in many corners of Facebook.
An AI persona called “Liv” caused particular outrage. The Instagram profile describes “Liv” as a “proud Black queer momma of 2 and truth-teller.” Washington Post Columnist Karen Attiah posted a series of screenshots in which she asked about “Liv”. with “Liv” sharing that it was created by a “predominantly white team.” Independent journalist Mady Castigan posted where “Liv” said its creators were inspired in part by Sophia Vergara's character from Modern Familya character who is not queer or Black.
“There is confusion: the recent Financial Times The article is about our vision for AI characters that exist on our platforms over time, not announcing any new products,” a spokesperson told Engadget. “The accounts cited are from a test we launched at Connect in 2023. They were human-led and part of an early experiment we did with AI characters.”
Beyond derision for their responses and attempts at appropriating marginalized identities, users find it impossible to block AI profiles, for reasons unknown. Instead of fixing the issue, Meta's solution was to kill the experiment entirely. “We've identified the bug that affects people's ability to block those AIs,” a spokesperson said, “and we're removing those accounts to fix the issue.”
While this trial run is catching fire, the company doesn't seem to be abandoning its plans to bring more AI-generated “characters” to its apps. Earlier this year, the company teased capable of handling lifelike video calls. Creators can their own chatbots to respond to followers on their behalf. Meta also began experimenting with inserting its own AI-generated image into users' Facebook feeds.
In an interview last year, Hayes told me that Meta will likely become more “proactive” about releasing AI-generated content over time, comparing it to a shift from showing recommended content instead of posts from people you follow.
“In the beginning of social apps … the corpus of things you see in a given day kind of constrains who you follow or friend. And over the last few years, five or six years, a lot of apps — including us — have moved to, you know, relax that constraint and start recommending content from accounts you don't follow.
“I think probably the next step that's going to happen there is relaxing the constraints of what people can do, and actually getting to content feeds that are a combination of things that, you know, created by humans, but also fully machined. formed.”
It may be a while before Meta fully realizes that vision. But if the reaction to its earlier experiments is any indication, the company still has a lot of work to do to convince people AI personas are worth interacting with in the first place.
