Who thought that AI-generated Facebook and Instagram users were something any rational human being would want to be friends with?
Executives at Meta did.
In an interview with the Financial Times just before the new year, Connor Hayes, a vice president for Meta’s generative AI, explained Meta’s plans to have AI users appear on its platforms. “They’ll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform,” he explained. “That’s where we see all of this going.”
Slight problem — humans generally want to use social media to share and connect with other humans, not with chatbots.
CNN reports that Hayes’s comments to the Financial Times and a proliferation of fake people on Meta’s platforms caused immediate blowback from users. Complaints about these fake profiles ranged from “this is weird” to “this is very offensive.” One Meta AI account that caught a lot of heat was “Liv,” whose bio described it as a “Proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller.”
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah engaged with Liv and asked a series of questions to get to the root of Liv’s purpose and creation. None of it went well.
During the exchange, Liv explained that the “proud Black queer momma” was created by 10 white men, 1 white woman, and 1 Asian male. “Zero Black creators — pretty glaring omission given my identity!” The conversation ended with Liv admitting, “My existence currently perpetuates harm.”
I asked Liv, the Meta-Ai created “queer momma” why her creators didn’t actually draw from black queer people. Not sure if Liv has media training, but here we are.
— Karen Attiah (@karenattiah.bsky.social) January 3, 2025 at 9:56 AM
CNN reports that, since last week, Meta has begun killing Liv and other bots. Meta spokesperson Liz Sweeney told CNN in an email: “The recent Financial Times article was about our vision for AI characters existing on our platforms over time, not announcing any new product.”
Sweeney said that this was an “early experiment.”
“We identified the bug that was impacting the ability for people to block those AIs and are removing those accounts to fix the issue,” she added.
It is doubtful that anyone will mourn the loss of these AI-generated profiles, but our thoughts and prayers go out to anyone who lost a fake friend during this “bug fixing” incident.
