Meta is now testing AI chatbots created by Instagram users

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, announced that the company will begin testing AI characters created by Instagram users through Meta AI Studio in the United States. The goal is to improve creator-business-audience relations.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, said on Thursday that the company will start showing AI characters made by Instagram users through Meta AI Studio. The tests will start in the United States.

On the same day that a16z-backed chatbot company Character.ai enabled users to converse with AI avatars over the phone, the social media company announced its plans.

In a video on his stream, Zuckerberg said that these chatbots will be marked as AI so that people know what they are.

Our AI studio is preparing for an early test in the United States. In the next few weeks, you may start to see AIs from your favourite creators and AIs that are based on your interests on Instagram. For now, he said, these AIs will primarily appear in messages and will identify themselves as AI.

“These AIs are still in their early stages, and this is the first beta version,” Zuckerberg said. “We’ll keep working to make them better, and soon they will be available to more people.”

Zuckerberg said that the company worked with creators like the meme account Wasted and the tech creator Don Allen Stevenson III to send out early versions of chatbots made by creators.

In a social media interview, Zuckerberg expanded on the potential applications of AI avatars. He stated, “We need to develop a variety of APIs that cater to the diverse interests of people.”

He also said, “A big part of the plan is to let every creator and, eventually, every small business on the platform make their AI to help them interact with their community and, if they’re a business, their customers.”

Meta Tests AI Avatars for Creator-Fan Interactions

Creators may also want to use AIs to interact with fans since they don’t have time to read and answer all of their messages right now.

He did say, though, that how good the AI avatars are in the end will be like an “art form” that changes and gets better over time.

Zuckerberg said, “I don’t think we know what the most interesting, fun, and trust-building way to do this is going to be before we start.” He explained, “We want to give people tools so that they can try this out and see what works best.”

Meta will start testing the feature with about 50 creators and a small group of users. More people will have access to it over the next few months, with a full launch planned for August.

At its developer conference last year, Meta first talked about its AI studio. This studio will help businesses make their chatbots.