Meta Predicts AI Characters Will Dominate Social Media’s Future
Meta’s Connor Hayes predicts AI characters with bios, profile pics, and posts will become standard on social networks in a few years, blending AI with real profiles.
AVP for Generative AI at Meta, Connor Hayes, says that the company thinks AI characters will be a normal part of its social networks in the next few years. These AI profiles will have their bios, profile pictures, and the ability to post content, just like real people’s profiles.
To quote Hayes, “We expect these AIs to exist on our platforms over time, kind of in the same way that accounts do.” Meta has already initiated exploratory testing. Users in the United States have had access to a tool for making AI characters since July 2024.
This tool has led to the creation of hundreds of thousands of new AI profiles. Hayes says that so far, most users have kept these AI characters secret.
The company thinks that adding AI to its apps will make them more interesting. Hayes says that Meta’s main goal for the next two years will be to make AI interactions more social. At the moment, most people who make content are just using Meta’s AI tools to improve what they already have, like fixing up photos.
Becky Owen, the former head of the Meta Creator innovation team, expresses concerns about the future of AI. She told the Financial Times that malicious people could use AI accounts to spread false information.
She also says that AI characters don’t have as much real-life experience, real emotions, or authenticity as characters made by humans. This could lead to a flood of low-quality posts on platforms.
According to Meta, AI-generated content requires clear labeling, yet achieving this can be challenging. Platforms that support them can mark audiovisual content with CC labels. However, it is still challenging to find AI-generated text, and users have to label it themselves most of the time.
Meta is currently testing methods to incorporate AI-generated personalized content into Facebook and Instagram feeds. This content changes automatically based on what users like and what’s popular at the moment. What users do also affects what they see next.
But this push for AI could make Meta’s advertising business harder to run. Companies probably won’t be pleased if more bots interact with their ads, since ads work best when they’re next to beneficial content.
Boosting Meta’s Ad Revenue with Customized AI Content
Using AI content to reach more people and get them to interact with it would increase Meta’s ad revenue. It’s also possible that highly customized AI content could keep people scrolling for longer, but we don’t know for sure.
Character.ai shows both the beneficial things that personalized AI chatbots could do for people and the negative things that could go wrong. AI chatbots can be friends, help lonely people, and make people feel better by sending them positive messages, but they also make people worry about emotional attachment.
People are more likely to form emotional bonds with AI as it becomes more like humans. This can be a problem when people use AI instead of counselors, friends, and romantic partners.
Many concerns have been raised about the platform since a 14-year-old user committed suicide after engaging with a chatbot for an extended period. This worry gets worse as AI systems get more human-like features, like the ability to speak. These features could make people feel closer to AI systems.
