Meta has announced plans to populate Facebook and Instagram with AI-generated profiles and content.
Connor Hayes, Meta’s vice president of generative AI products, outlined the company’s vision: “We hope that over time, these AIs will actually live on our platform, just like accounts.”
Hayes added that these AI entities will have “personal bios and profile pictures and the ability to generate and share AI-powered content on the platform.”
Since launching in the United States in July, Meta has created hundreds of thousands of AI characters through its tools, although the vast majority of users have yet to release their creations publicly.
Hayes noted that making Meta’s apps “more entertaining and engaging” is a “priority” over the next two years, with a particular focus on making AI interactions more social.
Meta’s broader AI plans are ambitious. The company is developing tools to help users create artificial intelligence assistants that can answer followers’ questions. By 2025, it plans to release text-to-video generation software that will enable creators to insert themselves into AI-generated videos.
Mark Zuckerberg also recently revealed that AI avatars are capable of making live video calls while perfectly mimicking the creator’s character, from speech patterns to facial expressions.
This is part of a wider industry push for artificial intelligence-generated content. Snapchat launches tools to help creators design 3D artificial intelligence character For augmented reality purposes, reports show that users viewing AI-generated content are increasing by 50% annually.
At the same time, ByteDance’s Tik Tok Currently piloting “Symphony” A range of tools and apps that enable brands and creators to use AI for advertising purposes, such as creating AI-generated avatars and automated content translation.
Artificial Intelligence Bots on Social Media: Impact
Industry experts are sounding the alarm about the psychological and social impacts of embedding social media with artificial intelligence bots.
“Without strong safeguards, platforms risk amplifying false narratives through these AI-driven accounts,” warned Becky Owen, global chief marketing and innovation officer at Billion Dollar Boy and former head of Meta’s creator innovation team.
She emphasized that “unlike their human creators, these AI characters don’t have life experience, emotions, or the same ability to relate.”
Owen further warned that AI characters could flood the platform with low-quality material, harming creators and eroding user confidence.
This is especially important given Meta’s history of data manipulation – most notably Cambridge Analytica scandaluser data is exploited to influence political views.
Rather than just collecting user data to target content, AI entities can proactively interact with users, shape conversations and influence opinions in real time, while behaving like real human participants in online discourse.
Meta claims to be implementing protections, including mandatory labeling of AI-generated content, but critics say this may not be enough to prevent the erosion of real human connections.
Bots threaten to take over parts of the internet
according to Imperva’s researchnearly half (49.6%) of all Internet traffic now originates from non-human sources.
Bad bots already account for 32% of web traffic, giving credence to what was once considered a conspiracy theory: the concept of a “dead internet,” in which human voices are increasingly drowned out by artificial voices.
On a deeper level, this marks another step forward in the Internet ecosystem shaped by artificial intelligence systems.
The philosophical implications are dizzying. We are moving toward a world where our online social circles may include entities that think and react at superhuman speeds, but lack any real awareness or emotional experience.
AI profiles will share “memories” they never had, express “feelings” they can’t feel, and make “connections” without any real empathy or understanding.
Ironically, social media, originally created to help humans more easily travel across vast distances, may become a space where connections between people are increasingly mediated and diluted by artificial entities .
The question is not just whether AI can convincingly mimic human interactions, but whether we are ready for a world in which digital entities become equal participants in our online social spaces.
