Meta is taking down profiles of several AI characters from Facebook and Instagram, created over a year ago after some of them were rediscovered by users and led to a viral controversy.
These AI-generated profiles were first introduced by Meta in September 2023, but most of them were removed last year.
Recently, Meta executive Connor Hayes said that the company was looking forward to introducing more AI characters. Among the AI products it plans to roll out, one allows users to create AI characters on Instagram and Facebook.
“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.
Meta’s “priority” in the next two years was to make its apps “more entertaining and engaging,” Hayes said, adding these accounts will 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 automated accounts posted AI-generated pictures to Instagram and answered messages from human users on Messenger.
Among such profiles, Liv, described itself as a “proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller” while Carter used a ‘datingwithcarter’ handle and claimed to be a relationship coach. Both included labels indicating they were managed by Meta.
Screenshots of conversations with these AI characters have now gone viral on social media, especially the ones where users asked them questions like who created and developed the AI.
Liv claimed that her creator team did not include any Black people and was predominantly white and male. It was a “pretty glaring omission given my identity”, it said to a question from The Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah.
The profiles started disappearing soon after they went viral on social media. Some users claimed these profiles couldn’t be blocked, but Meta spokesperson Liz Sweeney noted that it was a bug.
Sweeney claimed that these accounts — part of the 2023 experiment with AI — were managed by humans. Meta has taken down the profiles to fix the bug that prevented users from blocking them, Sweeney added.
In a statement, Sweeney said that “there is confusion,” adding the recent Financial Times article was “about our vision for AI characters existing on our platforms over time, not announcing any new product”.
The company had released 28 personas in 2023, but all were shut down on Friday, The Guardian reported.
“These were managed by humans and were part of an early experiment we did with AI characters. We identified the bug that was impacting the ability for people to block those AIs and are removing those accounts to fix the issue,” Sweeney added.
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