Imagine: You direct message your favorite Instagram influencer and a reply comes back lightning fast. You didn’t even think they checked their DMs! But it might not be a real person behind that personalized message, even if it sounds just like them.
Soon, anyone in the U.S. will be able to create AI versions of themselves on Instagram or the web as Meta rolls out AI Studio.
The idea is that creators and business accounts will use the AI to talk directly to their followers, responding to comments or replying to messages.
It’s up to the creator to tell the AI what topics are off limits, like a financial influencer opting not to advise on investing in crypto, something that could get you in trouble with the SEC.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked about the latest rollout in a chat with NVIDIA’s CEO.
“There’s kind of a fundamental issue here where there’s just not enough hours in the day, right? It’s like, if you’re a creator, you want to engage more with your community, but you’re constrained on time. And similarly, your community wants to engage with you, but it’s tough,” Zuckerberg said. “So the next best thing is allowing people to basically create these artifacts, right? It’s an agent, but you train it on your material to represent you in the way that you want.”
“It’s a very creative endeavor, almost like a piece of art or content that you’re putting out there,” he continued. “It’s to be very clear that it’s not engaging with the creators themselves, but I think it’ll be another interesting way, just like how creators put out content on these social systems, to be able to have agents that do that.”
Zuckerberg touched on some of the issues surrounding these AI versions of people, like labeling so people know they’re not actually interacting with the creator, but an AI agent.
Meta’s AI Studio also allows people to create their own AI chatbots, and is on top of Meta’s main chatbot offering, Meta AI.
“It’s all part of this bigger view that we have that there shouldn’t just be one big AI that people interact with,” he said. “We just think that the world will be better and more interesting if there’s a diversity of these different things.”
There are some apparent concerns regarding the advancement of AI. Privacy is a major one. Meta is already using people’s posts and data to develop its AI systems, though users can opt out. Creating a unique AI chatbot comes with privacy sacrifice: How much data is one willing to hand over to replicate oneself?
Another concern is human connection. Americans have gotten so lonely, the surgeon general declared loneliness an epidemic. Social media is a big part of that already.
In a study, people who reported using social media more than two hours a day had double the odds of reporting social isolation compared to those who are on social media less than 30 minutes a day.
Still, people, especially teens, use social media for that human connection. And more frequently, the other side of that connection may be artificial.
“With generative AI, I think we’re going to quickly move into the zone where not only is the majority of the content that you see today on Instagram just recommended to you from stuff that’s out there in the world that matches your interests, whether or not you follow the people, I think in the future, a lot of the stuff is going to be created with these tools, too,” Zuckerberg said.