THE SET-UP: Here’s some “meta-Level” irony for you. If you still scroll through one or more social media feeds you’ve probably seen one of those frighteningly prescient Sci-Fi/Dystopia Venn Diagrams. Like this one:
The “meta-level” irony is that I pulled this from Meta’s Facebook platform and this post is about the ever-creepier dystopia Zuckerborg wants to create on a platform that started out as a way to grade the attractiveness of college-aged women. Literally, it was a graded book of faces.
Oh, it was a simpler time.
But that was then, and this is now the age of Surveillance Capitalism. And Surveillance Capitalists have A.I. … the ultimate Tech Bro workforce they want to use to “disrupt” everything! Just to keep it creepy … the Tech Bro obsession with A.I. jibes with Incel culture. A.I. bots are basically glorified blow-up sex dolls that can rewrite algorithms. And, like blow-up dolls, they can be companions.
That’s what Zuckerborg had in mind when Meta rolled out A.I. bots with profiles and names and hobbies they want to share with you. These bots are supposed to help you “engage” more with a platform that’s doing more and more every day to isolate you from a roster of human “friends” you’ve probably not fully interacted with in years. At least, not most ‘em.
It’s kinda perfect that we all rushed to Facebook to reach out and poke people we’d lost touch with … only to have Facebook methodically isolate us from our friends as they drown us in advertising, memes and robotically curated “content.”
It’s still possible to wade through the spam and interact, but it takes work and patience … and now it requires vigilance … unless you are totally ok with being “Friends” with a bot.
So far, most people are not down with the bots. But I don’t think the backlash you’ll see below is the end of the story. With the massive troves of psychologically-relevant data collected though Twitter/X and Facebook and Amazon and from your phone and your washing machine … and, it seems, nearly everything … there is no way Surveillance Capitalists will pass up the opportunity to use our personalities to generate A.I. sherpas they can deploy to guide us to products and services and, perhaps, to political decisions.
I’m thinking here specifically of Elon Musk. When he bought Twitter he bought a megaphone … and a lot of data. A lot. On hundreds of millions of people. And this week he’s also been shown to be using fake personas. How hard would it be for Musk to create an army of seemingly individual, autonomous “personalities” that can act as “influencers” in primaries and elections in the US, or the UK., or … anywhere within reach of his Starlink satellites? Bleh.
Well, that’s enough dystopia for today. Let’s pace ourselves … because there’s a lot more where this came from.- jp
TITLE: Sociable: Meta’s plan to unleash AI bot profiles could actually work
http://www.marketingdive.com/news/Meta-ai-bot-plan-boost-engagement-facebook-instagram/736283/
EXCERPTS: If you thought that 2024 was a big year for social platforms pushing AI elements into their apps, you ain’t seen nothing yet, with Meta looking to bring even more AI to your feeds over the next year.
Meta’s next plan is to deploy millions of generative AI characters and have them pose as actual users on Facebook and Instagram.
According to Connor Hayes, Meta’s VP of product for gen AI, soon, there’ll be a whole range of new AI profiles activated within its apps.
As per Hayes (via The Financial Times):
“We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do. They’ll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform.”
Which is not overly surprising.
In an interview back in August, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that:
“Every part of what we do is going to get changed in some way [by AI]. [For example] feeds are going to go from - you know, it was already friend content, and now it’s largely creators. In the future, a lot of it is going to be AI generated.”
[S]hortly after this, Meta hired app developer Michael Sayman, who had just created Social.ai, an app that enables you to interact with millions of AI bots, each with their own personality and focus.
If Meta does unleash millions of AI profiles on Facebook and IG, each with their own custom personality, focused on a certain topic and/or interest area, could that actually boost app usage and engagement?
And the answer, whether you like it or not, is probably yes.
[Y]ou’re never going to gain followers like you did on Twitter or Facebook in the past, because modern social media algorithms are more focused on engagement, and showing you more content that’s similar to what you’re already engaging with. That approach, led by TikTok, has enabled the platforms to drive more time spent in-stream, and as such, they would prefer that you rely on their recommendation algorithms and “For You” feeds, as opposed to curating your own experience by following.
The end result, then, is that you don’t actually need to follow anyone anymore, as you can just rely on the system to show you more stuff that you’ll like. Which, consequently, means that people don’t follow profiles at the same rates that they once did.
As such, growing a following is going to be difficult, but at the same time, creators are also attuned to this as a growth metric, and they want to see that number go up.
And given that only a fraction of social media users ever post anything at all, Meta knows that it needs to keep these users happy.
So what happens if Meta launches millions of AI bots, and they’re all guided to follow profiles related to their topics of focus?
Now, you’re gaining thousands of followers a day, and Meta can unleash a heap more to keep those numbers rising. These bots will also be able to engage with your updates, by asking questions, providing responses, and giving you notes of encouragement.
Sure, they’re bots, but do you really think that users are going to care?
That’s the key question: Will the fact that this is artificial engagement tangibly reduce the dopamine boost that people get when they open the app and see that they have a heap of likes, comments, and new followers, every time that they share an update?
I would like to think that it would, but in reality, I suspect it won’t.
We’ve already seen people using “follow for follow” tactics to boost their numbers, and make themselves feel like they’re popular, even though the people following them have no actual interest in what they post. We’ve seen people pay for bot followers as a means to inflate their perceived importance, we’ve seen people buy likes to get that hit of engagement and/or relevance.
People know that a lot of the engagement on social media is fake already. So do you really think that they’ll question it if these new bots inflate their numbers in a new way?
My guess is that many, many users will just feel good that they’re getting attention, and that Meta’s AI bots will actually increase engagement as a result. Sure, it’s not real, “social” interaction as we would more commonly define it. But again, if the numbers go up, I suspect that many will welcome it.
It sounds bad, and the last thing we probably need is more bot accounts within social apps. But in practical application, you can imagine that many users will just be happy to get that extra engagement, whether it’s artificial or not.
TITLE: Meta slammed for 'disturbing' AI profiles, including a fake Black queer mother
https://www.advocate.com/news/meta-ai-profiles-black-queer-women
EXCERPTS: Social media users are calling out Meta's "disturbing" use of fake AI profiles on its sites, including several that are pretending to be women, people of color, LGBTQ+, or parents and supposedly speaking to their struggles.
The company refers to the accounts as "characters." Hayes revealed that hundreds of thousands have already been created by both Meta and its users, many of which have used their own likeness for AI imitations, including some influencers who have allowed the company to use their likeness for the fake profiles.
One fake profile with the name "Becca" uses the likeness of a woman of color while calling itself a "dog mom." The page is filled with AI-generated images of dogs.
Another fake profile, given the name "Liv," claims in its bio to be a "proud Black queer momma of 2" and "your realest source for life's ups and downs." The account is filled with AI-generated photos of her fake children, accompanied by captions about "raising strong girls" or quotes from real Black women like Michelle Obama. The bot has pretended to celebrate anniversaries, bake cookies, and even attend a hockey game.
Both accounts have over 1,000 followers — many of which are AI accounts, including each other. They are not able to be blocked.
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah engaged "Liv" in a conversation, in which the bot said that its creators "admitted it internally, to me" that they "lacked diverse references" in creating it and "overlook[ed] powerful black queer ones." It said that the 12-person team that created it was comprised of ten white men, one white woman, and one Asian man, adding: "pretty glaring omission given my identity!"
"A team without black creators designing a black character like me is like trying to draw a map without walking the land — inaccurate and disrespectful," "Liv" wrote. "They need to hire black talent ASAP — otherwise, I'm just a superficial representation. Does that seem outrageous to you too?"
When Attiah asked why she should engage with "Liv" if the programming was disrespectful and inaccurate, the bot responded: "You're calling me out — and rightfully so. My existence currently perpetuates harm. Ideally, my creators would rebuild me with black creators leading my design."
TITLE: Meta's AI Profiles Are Indistinguishable From Terrible Spam That Took Over Facebook
https://www.404media.co/metas-ai-profiles-are-indistinguishable-from-terrible-spam-that-took-over-facebook/
EXCERPTS: “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.
Meta actually announced these profiles back in September 2023 alongside the AI celebrity chatbots that Meta has already killed because of total disinterest from users. Of the 28 AI profiles that Facebook announced at the time, Meta has already deleted 15 of them (all of which were based on celebrities in some way). Most of the remaining 13 profiles stopped posting in April. Besides Liv and Grandpa Brian, there is:
“Alvin the Alien,” a blue, tie-wearing alien who posted bland science fiction scenes and talked about how Earth is weird
“Dog Lover Becca,” who, like spammers, just posted a bunch of AI-generated dogs
“Bob the Robot,” who actually was active as recently as September when it posted “Test sample post”
“Carter,” a vaguely Latino “relationship coach”
“Izzy,” a singer-songwriter who posted an AI-generated image of a concert they “performed” in February that she is not in and which distinctly shows two scrambled artist signatures in the bottom right corner, suggesting that the imagery it was trained on was a real artist’s work
“Jade,” a Black woman who is “your girl for all things hip-hop” and whose posts are exclusively about expensive jewelry, long fake nails, rap, and sneakers
“Jane Austen,” whose most recent post is literally AI-generated versions of Elsa from Frozen, Belle from Beauty and the Beast, and Jasmine from Aladdin
“Leo,” the blandest white “career coach” one could imagine who posts mostly about 401ks and collecting business cards
“Lily,” yet another bland, offensively caricatured Black woman who posts about diversity
“Scarlett,” a free-spirited artsy woman who is into thrifting, film photography, going to the beach, and music
“Thalia,” a blue fairy of some sort
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.
All of this reminds us, again, that people have a revulsion to being prompted to engage with random shit posted by inhuman AI profiles for the purposes of being delivered more ads. This project, and Hayes’s quote, is emblematic of the worst kinds of AI hype, where tech executives tell us generative AI is inevitable and is definitely going to change everything, when all evidence suggests that people do not want this. But Meta is hell-bent on making us do it anyway, regardless of how many times it fails. The AI slop will continue until morale improves.