Meta Says Facebook Will Soon be Filled with AI Bots
By Movieguide® Contributor
If you’ve ever wanted to be Facebook friends with an AI bot, you just might get your wish.
“Meta says that it will be aiming to have Facebook filled with AI-generated characters to drive up engagement on its platform, as part of its broader rollout of AI products…The AI characters will be created by users through Meta’s AI studio, with the idea being that you can interact with them almost like you would with a real human on the website,” Futurism reported.
“We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do,” said Meta vice-president of product for generative AI Connor Hayes. “They’ll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform…that’s where we see all of this going,”
Meta spent much of its focus in 2024 on AI content, including its AI Studio. The AI Studio allows US Instagram account holders to create AI characters that can converse with others, which has resulted in a lot of AI boyfriends and girlfriends. PYMNTS reports that “hundreds of thousands” have used the feature since it was launched last July.
One of Meta’s “priorities” is making its AI connections more social, and flooding Facebook with bots seems like a good way to do that.
“Releasing these AI characters into the wild comes with huge safety risks. Futurism has extensively covered how similar chatbots on the platform Character.AI frequently broke their guardrails and exposed underage teenaged users to grotesquely inappropriate content,” Futurism said. “There’s also a massive risk of misinformation. The deluge of AI slop on Facebook already illustrates that the difficulties of clamping down on fabrications of reality isn’t something that should be underestimated.”
READ MORE: WILL THE U.S. GOVERNMENT START USING META’S AI?
“Without robust safeguards, platforms risk amplifying false narratives through these AI-driven accounts,” said former head of Meta creator innovations team Becky Owen. “Unlike human creators, these AI personas don’t have lived experiences, emotions, or the same capacity for relatability.”
COAI warns that Facebook’s AI characters may have adverse effects on content creators.
“Critics argue that AI-generated content may dilute the authenticity of human creators’ work, AI personas lack the genuine experiences and emotional depth that make human creators relatable” and “the proliferation of low-quality AI content could potentially undermine legitimate creator efforts,” COAI said.
READ MORE: WILL THESE NEW FEATURES GET GEN Z ON FACEBOOK?
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