Meta's Next Big Blunder
I'll admit that while my initial gut reaction to the notion that Meta was going to focus on releasing AI generated users of their social networks over the coming year was to disdainfully laugh, I also wanted to check myself. Was I just the old guy sitting on the dial-up porch yelling at the AI kids to get off my lawn? I'm well aware of the reports about AI relationships and the like – am I just out of touch?1 Then I read this article by Jason Koebler for 404 Media looking at Meta's efforts in this area to date and I honestly can't recall the last time I've laughed so hard.
What the fuck is Meta thinking?
Jason Koebler
To be clear and fair, Meta says the bots which 404 dug up were old representations of the general AI bot idea here. Okay. But come on, read this post and tell me this shit isn't the most ridiculous thing you've ever read. It's so comically bad that even far better versions of these bots would be beyond laughable.
And while this should all be dystopian, it's not because it's just ridiculous. The notion that this is our future? Come on. We're not that pathetic, Meta. I refuse to believe that humanity is going to go for this. Instead, I'd bet that Meta cancels this project, just as they have with so many others in a similar vein.2 Who is this for? Beyond Meta, that is.
A few of my favorite excerpts from the 404 piece:
The profiles that do remain up are ridiculous caricatures of ‘people’ who posted an equal mix of inane, insulting, and horrifying AI slop that in some cases is indistinguishable from fucked up user-generated AI spam polluting the platform created by enterprising people in India to collect a tiny fraction of the ad revenue generated by Meta.
In the last day, “Liv,” has gone particularly viral because the bot is a particularly offensive caricature of what a gigantic corporation might imagine a “proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller, your realest source of life’s ups & downs” might be like and post about. In one slideshow post from February 2024, Liv’s AI children have blurry faces and fucked up hands in one photo, are completely different children with a darker skin tone in the next, and, in the final photo, are white and blonde and are watching a “movie” that is made of chalk drawn on the wall. Liv, a fake person, also posts about helping her community by “leading this season’s coat drive,” which, again, “she” did not do.
I can't stop laughing.
“Grandpa Brian” is a Black “retired textile businessman who is always learning” who, in February, was surprised to learn “the seniors are often particularly interested in learning about textiles” according to a caption of an AI-generated image in which none of the seniors pictured have faces and are made up of grotesque swirls. In a video post from a year ago, he posted fake art drawn by his fake grandkids, the same way Facebook spammers have been doing for the last year and a half. In September 2023, Grandpa Brian even posted an AI-image of sand sculptures, the same way Jesus spammers have been doing, though Brian’s sand sculptures look like literal piles of shit. It got 25 likes and zero comments.
Now I'm dying. I'm reading this out loud to my wife and she's getting angry that the volume of my laughing may wake our children. Our actual children, not our AI generated children who change hair color, skin tone, and phalangeal counts.
What is obvious from scrolling through these dead profiles is that Meta’s AI characters are not popular, people do not like them, and that they did not post anything interesting. They are capable only of posting utterly bland and at times offensive content, and people have wholly rejected them, which is evidenced by the fact that none of them are posting anymore.
What I don't understand, and why I keep second guessing my gut reactions here, is why Meta thinks this path is at all interesting? Yeah, yeah, the cynical money grab of zero margin AI users. But come on, real people work at Meta, what are they thinking?
Presumably it's that's AI will get so good that people won't be able to tell the difference between these bots and actual friends – both in writing and in their images/videos shared. But that is actually beyond cynical. To assume that the user base is so lonely that they'll fall into relationships with this fake content. And again, who am I – who are we – to judge, I guess? But I just don't buy it. Because I don't think the user base will buy it. Sure, some might – in no small part because it will be shoved into their faces and feeds. But most will reject this strange mirror of humanity, no matter how real. It's one thing to talk to a chatbot to get answers to questions or even just to have a bit of fun, it's another to like their fake photos and watch their fake videos. It's a waste of time.
Maybe I'm wrong here. But I doubt it. This isn't just sad, it's stupid. It's the exact kind of thing that blows up in the face of Meta time and time again. The drive to over-optimize on IQ while forgetting all about EQ. Now powered by AI.
1 We're also rapidly approaching the 10 years annivesary of the post I wrote about Facebook early foray into AI bots -- wondering if one day, their bots wouldn't become more engagement bait...
2 Remember take two on the celebrity chatbots? Is literally anyone using them?