What’s the one thing you’d like to see more of on Instagram and Facebook? More posts from friends and acquaintances? More genuine original content on topics that interest you? I know, how about more bots?
Meta has decided that it’s the latter. Despite users’ frustrations with a deluge of automated bots and spam, the tech giant plans to allow people to create fully autonomous AI accounts within the next two years. The ‘AI users’ will be able to create and share content just like human users. It may be time to assess whether Instagram should still be on our list of the best social media platforms.
Meta already allows influencers to create AI assistants (Image credit: Meta)
According to the Financial Times, Meta thinks semi-independent custom avatars will be more engaging for young audiences. Connor Hayes, Meta’s vice-president of product for generative AI, said. “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.”
The train was set in motion by Meta’s launch of its AI Studio in July. This allows influencers to create their own AI characters and assistants to, for example, respond to questions from followers, reducing the amount of time they need to dedicate to interacting directly. CEO Mark Zuckerberg has also teased a demo of an AI avatar that could take live video calls. Meta claims that users have already created “hundreds of thousands of characters” via AI Studio but that they remain mainly private.
With Meta’s data and resources, it should be able to read trends and predict where Gen Z’s social media preferences are going much better than I, but the company has made some spectacularly bad bets in recent years. It blew billions on the metaverse, which failed to take off, and it was convinced that people would want to buy clothes for digital avatars on Instagram. Last year, it debuted AI chatbots with the names and likenesses of celebrities. People hated them and the project was dropped in under 12 months. Yet it’s still convinced people want to engage with bots.
The latest move could change Facebook and Instagram as we know them, and I don’t think I’m exaggerating if I say it could mean the nail in the coffin for the ‘social’ part of social media. The appeal of AI users to Meta is obvious. Human users switch off because they have real lives. AI users would be able to interact on the platform 24/7.
But the potential appeal for users is much less clear. I presume Meta will identify the AI accounts in some way so people at least know that they’re interacting with a bot. But when people are already complaining about the amount of automated bots, ads and engagement farming, the prospect of millions of approved AI accounts is likely to mean people see even less content from people they know.
