Instagram and Facebook encourage the creation of AI-generated accounts
Cristina Criddle and Hannah Murphy for the Financial Times:
The Silicon Valley group is rolling out a range of AI products, including one that helps users create AI characters on Instagram and Facebook, as it battles with rival tech groups to attract and retain a younger audience.
“We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do,” said Connor Hayes, vice-president of product for generative AI at Meta.
“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,” he added.
Hayes said a “priority” for Meta over the next two years was to make its apps “more entertaining and engaging”, which included considering how to make the interaction with AI more social.
He said hundreds of thousands of characters have already been created using its AI character tool — which launched in the US in July, with plans to expand its access in the future — but most users have kept them private so far.
What are we gaining from this, and I’m not sure what they are gaining from this?
I can’t imagine a situation in which I would enjoy interacting with a bot, other than to gain information from it.
All this does it make me want to not engage with platforms that want this to be the norm, and post only on a blog that I own and can control.
Referencing: Meta envisages social media filled with AI-generated users