Meta Platforms Inc. plans to flood Facebook and other social media platforms with artificial intelligence-powered user profiles, one of its top executives has said.
Over the last year, Meta has been developing and promoting various new AI tools across Facebook, Instagram and other sites. It has rolled out AI chatbots in the Messenger app, and in July it launched AI character creation tools that have already been used to create “hundreds of thousands of characters,” according to Connor Hayes, the company’s vice president of product for generative AI.
The vast majority of these AI-created characters remain private for now, but Meta anticipates they will become widespread throughout its platforms in the next few years.
“We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do,” Hayes told the Financial Times in an interview today. “They’ll have bios and profile pictures and they’ll be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform. That’s where we see all of this going.”
According to Hayes, investment in AI will continue to be a priority for Meta over the next two years, as it strives to make its platforms “more entertaining and engaging” for users. On Facebook, users already have access to AI tools for editing photos and creating AI assistants that can be used to respond to fans’ messages.
The Financial Times article added that Meta is also planning to launch a new text-to-video tool for content creators, allowing users to insert themselves into AI-generated videos.
A spokesperson for Meta told Fox Business that the tool will enable people to create video characters that are “AIs based on your interests.” They’re designed both to entertain and to provide support, so users might create AI characters that can teach others how to cook, share advice on fashion, provide tips for applying cosmetics or more.
What could go wrong?
Although Meta does clearly label all AI-generated content on its platforms, critics say there are justifiable reasons to be alarmed about the proliferation of largely unsupervised AI users and AI-generated content on social media sites.
Such concerns include the risk of political manipulation and platforms being flooded with low-quality content, but there is also potential for more serious harm. One mother recently filed a lawsuit against the AI company Character Technologies Inc., alleging that one of its chatbots encouraged her 14-year-old son to commit suicide.
“Without robust safeguards, platforms risk amplifying false narratives through these AI-driven accounts,” Meta’s former head of creator innovations Becky Owen told the Financial Times.
Owen also warned of the risk of low-quality content diluting the brand of social media platforms. “Unlike human creators, these AI personas don’t have lived experiences, emotions or the same capacity for relatability,” she said.
Nonetheless, Meta appears to be determined to press ahead with its plans to swamp social media with AI, if only because it needs to see a return on the billions of dollars it has invested in the technology so far.
In April, Meta Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said it may be several years before the company sees any payoff.
“Historically, investing to build these new scaled experiences in our apps has been a very good long-term investment for us and for investors who have stuck with us and the initial signs are quite positive here, too,” Zuckerberg said during an earnings call with analysts. “Building the leading AI will also be a larger undertaking than the other experiences we’ve added to our apps and this is likely going to take several years.”
Image: SiliconANGLE/Microsoft Designer
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