3 days Ago By Andy Meek
Here’s an idea for my colleagues in the media business that run news properties with declining readerships: You could always take a page from , and just ...
pad your customer base with AI-generated users. I kid, sort of, but that’s literally what Facebook and Instagram are about to do — specifically, they’re launching AI-generated accounts soon that will share content and interact with real, human users, even though the accounts are bots that are as real as the Easter Bunny. Honestly, it baffles me that this is a real idea, one that actual humans dreamed up, but this is apparently where we are in the life cycle of Meta.
Bots are about to become the new influencers on Facebook and Instagram. “We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do,” Connor Hayes, Meta’s vice-president of product for generative AI, said in an interview with the . “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.
” Like every major tech company right now, Facebook’s parent is going all-in on AI — and has, honestly, launched or teased some pretty interesting offerings along these lines that range from a text bot reminiscent of ChatGPT and various video creation and photo-editing tools. That said, I can’t help but feel incredibly cynical about this whole fake user idea. Seriously, how do those investor calls with analysts go during quarterly earnings presentations, once this idea starts getting under way? “It was another great quarter, with user engagement through the roof — and next quarter, we anticipate creating even more users.
” Already — ! — I see so much AI-generated slop on Instagram and Facebook that it’s one more factor dampening the experience for me. It takes me all of two seconds to rattle off all sorts of downsides to this AI-generated user account idea, from these accounts potentially exacerbating misinformation to AI spreading propaganda, fake news, scams, or even just dumb crap that makes people want to user Facebook and Instagram less. Sign up for the most interesting tech & entertainment news out there.
By signing up, I agree to the and have reviewed the To that last point, the only way I can use Facebook now without wanting to tear my hair out is by immediately ignoring the main News Feed, which is overrun with suggested posts that I never care about, and heading over the “Feeds” tab to check in on the pages that I’ve liked and the people I’m connected to. Imagine that, a user who (wait for it!) simply wants to keep up with the things he likes. I can hear the condescending laughter from Meta executives here, all the way from the company’s executive suite in California.
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