Meta has announced plans to populate Facebook and Instagram with AI-generated profiles and content.
Connor Hayes, Meta’s vice-president of product for generative AI, outlined the corporate’s vision: “We expect these AIs to truly, over time, exist on our platforms, sort of in the identical way that accounts do.”
Hayes added that these AI entities could have “bios and profile pictures and find a way to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform.”
Meta has already seen lots of of 1000’s of AI characters created through its tools since their US launch in July, though the overwhelming majority of users haven’t released their creations publicly.
Hayes notes that making Meta’s apps “more entertaining and fascinating” is a “priority” for the subsequent two years, with a selected give attention to making AI interactions more social.
Meta’s broader AI plans are ambitious. The company is developing tools to assist users create AI assistants that may reply to followers’ questions. For 2025, it plans to release text-to-video generation software enabling creators to insert themselves into AI-generated videos.
Mark Zuckerberg also recently revealed AI avatars able to conducting live video calls while perfectly mimicking a creator’s persona, from their speaking patterns to their facial expressions.
This forms a part of a broader industry push toward AI-generated content. Snapchat released tools that enable creators to design 3D AI characters for augmented reality purposes, reporting a 50% annual increase in users viewing AI-generated content.
Meanwhile, ByteDance-owned TikTok is piloting “Symphony,” a series of tools and applications that allows brands and creators to make use of AI for promoting purposes, equivalent to creating AI-generated avatars and automating content translation.
AI bots on social media: The implications
Industry experts are sounding alarms in regards to the psychological and social implications of embedding social media with AI bots.
Becky Owen, global chief marketing and innovation officer at Billion Dollar Boy and former head of Meta’s creator innovations team, cautions that “without robust safeguards, platforms risk amplifying false narratives through these AI-driven accounts,” in accordance with the FT.
She emphasizes, “Unlike human creators, these AI personas don’t have lived experiences, emotions, or the identical capability for relatability.”
Owen further warns that AI characters could flood platforms with low-quality material that undermines creators and erodes user confidence.
This takes on added weight given Meta’s history with data manipulation – most notably the Cambridge Analytica scandal, where user data was exploited to influence political beliefs.
Rather than merely harvesting user data to focus on content, AI entities could actively engage with users, shape conversations, and influence opinions in real time, all while appearing to be authentic human participants in online discourse.
Meta claims to be implementing protective measures, including mandatory labeling of AI-generated content, but critics argue this may occasionally not be sufficient to stop the erosion of authentic human connection.
Bots threaten to takeover parts of the web
According to research from Imperva, nearly half of all web traffic – 49.6% – now originates from non-human sources.
Bad bots already account for 32% of web traffic, lending credence to what was once dismissed as a conspiracy theory: the concept of a “dead web” where human voices develop into increasingly drowned out by artificial ones.
On a deeper level, this signals yet one more progression towards a web ecosystem shaped by AI systems.
The philosophical implications are dizzying. We’re moving toward a world where our online social circles may include entities that think and respond at superhuman speeds, yet lack any real consciousness or emotional experience.
AI profiles will share “memories” they never had, express “feelings” they can not feel, and forge “connections” with none capability for true empathy or understanding.
Ironically, social media, originally created to assist humans connect more easily across vast distances, may develop into an area where human connection is increasingly mediated and diluted by artificial entities.
The query isn’t simply whether AI can convincingly mimic human interaction but whether we’re prepared for a world where digital entities develop into equal participants in our online social spaces.
