Meta’s AI profile is indistinguishable from the bad spam that took over Facebook

Earlier this week, Meta executive Connor Hayes told the Financial Times that the company plans to roll out AI character profiles on Instagram and Facebook. You’ll be able to create a profile picture that “lives on our platform just like your account…with a bio and history,” and generate and share AI-powered content on the platform. ”

This quote has gotten a lot of attention because “social networks,” ostensibly made up of humans and designed to connect them, have become clearly non-profits designed with the express purpose of: It was another sign that it is once again betting its future on human-like bots. Pollute the platform with AI-generated slop, as spammers are already doing, and as Mark Zuckerberg recently told investors of his clear plan. Immediately after the Financial Times article, people began to notice the exact kind of profile Hayes was talking about and assumed that Mehta had begun carrying out the plan.

But the now rapidly spreading meta-controlled AI-generated Instagram and Facebook profiles have been on the platform for more than a year, all posted 10 months ago and almost universally ignored by users. has been stopped. Many of the AI-generated profiles created and published by Meta have been permanently removed. The remaining companies have not posted new content since April 2024, but their chat functionality continues to work.

People’s understandable aversion to the idea of ​​meta-controlled AI bots taking up space on Facebook and Instagram leads us to believe that these existing bots are the new bots “announced” by Hayes in the Financial Times. Now it looks like this. Hayes quotes that Meta envisions eventually releasing tools that allow users to create these characters and profiles and allow those AI profiles to coexist with regular profiles. So while Meta hasn’t actually released anything new, this news cycle has caused people to search for Meta’s existing AI-generated profiles and realize how bad it is. It has become.

After this article was first published, Mehta’s spokeswoman Liz Sweeney told 404 Media that there was no internet connection between what Mr Hayes told the Financial Times and what was currently being discussed online. “There has been some confusion” and Mehta said he is now deleting those accounts. 404 Media confirmed that many of the profiles that were public at the time of publication of this article have since been removed.