After a backlash, Meta says newly viral AI-generated profiles on Facebook and Instagram were created in 2023 in “an early experiment”, and it is deleting them

and what you can do with it Mia Sato / The Verge : Meta's AI-generated bot profiles are not being received well Josh Kerwick / Star Observer : Meta Wipes Scrutinised AI Accounts, Including A “Black Queer Momma” Kyle Orland / Ars Technica : Instagram users discover old AI-powered “characters,” instantly revile them Matthew Gault / Gizmodo : Meta's AI Profiles Are Already Polluting Instagram and Facebook With Slop Lucas Nolan / Breitbart : Mark Zuckerberg Wants to Flood Your Facebook Feed with AI ‘Friends’ Anna Iovine / Mashable : Meta deletes AI character profiles after backlash, racism accusations Markus Kasanmascheff / WinBuzzer : Meta Takes Down Its AI Bot Accounts After Online Backlash Enacy Mapakame / Cryptopolitan : Meta quickly deletes its AI bot accounts on FB after users' outrage David Uzondu / Neowin : Meta nukes ‘Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller’ AI account after backlash Hindustan Times : Meta denies deleting AI-powered character chatbots on Instagram and Facebook Akash Pandey / NewsBytes : Meta takes down AI bot profiles on Instagram, Facebook Miles Klee / Rolling Stone : Instagram and Facebook Delete Experimental AI Accounts After Backlash Matt Jancer / VICE : Meta's “AI Users” Lead to Backlash, Confusion, and Ultimately Retraction Maria Deutscher / SiliconANGLE : Meta deletes its AI-powered Facebook and Instagram profiles following criticism M.G. Siegler / Spyglass : Meta's Next Big Blunder Angrej Singh / Axios : Meta deletes 2023 AI-generated profiles after uproar Emma Keates / AV Club : Meta says the crappy AI bots going viral this week aren't the ones they're excited about Karissa Bell / Engadget : Meta sends its AI-generated profiles to hell where they belong Mia Sato / The Verge : RIP Carter the AI relationship coach. Simon Willison / Simon Willison's Weblog : Quoting Jason Koebler Ryan Adamczeski / Advocate : Meta slammed for ‘disturbing’ AI profiles, including a fake Black queer mother Christopher Zara / Fast Company : How to block AI Instagram profiles ‘managed by Meta’ Jon Keegan / Sherwood News : Meta's fake AI users are here and they're giving everybody the creeps Bluesky: Moti Black / @motiblackart : The team behind the ‘proud Black queer momma’ included no Black people...  Maybe before they try running with knives (Artificial Intelligence) they should try walking with spoons (Garden Variety Intelligence). Den O Rourke / @denbearorourke : “Those AI profiles included Liv, whose profile described her as a “proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller” and Carter, whose account handle was “datingwithcarter” and described himself as a relationship coach. ”  The company released 28 personas in 2023; all were shut down on Friday. Margot Finn / @eicathomefinn : Personacide at Meta: ‘The company released 28 personas in 2023; all were shut down on Friday.  —  Conversations with the characters quickly went sideways when some users peppered them with questions including who created and developed the AI.’ 1/2 Andy Fleming / @slackbastard : yeah but nah but ...  ‘The world becomes a sum of lifeless artifacts; from synthetic food to synthetic organs, the whole man becomes part of the total machinery that he controls and is simultaneously controlled by ...’  —  www.404media.co/metas-ai-pro... Ed Zitron / @edzitron.com : To be clear, this is what Meta thinks we're worth - synthetic people that talk a pallid kind of nonsense disconnected both from the context of race and of being a human being, used to deliberately interfere with us interacting with real people as a means of increasing ad impressions.  They hate us! [embedded post] Karissa Bell / @karissabe : Liv got so much attention today, not enough people talking about Brian a “retired textile businessman” who is also “everybody's grandpa” 🤔 [images] Katie Notopoulos / @katienotopoulos : Everyone's talking about how the AI bots made by Meta are bad, but just a reminder you can make your own Meta AI chatbot right inside Messenger and there's definitely no problems there [images] Karl Bode / @karlbode.com : it really can't be overstated that meta is a preposterously terrible, uninteresting, innovatively sterile company that lucked into its power and is obsessed with shoveling lazy automated dogshit down the communal discourse gullet [embedded post] Derek Powazek / @fraying : All of the AI slop profiles listed in the 404 Media story published earlier today are now gone.  —  The only thing standing between us and a dystopian AI future is a website with 4 employees. @infinitegalaxies : i'm so disgusted by meta's fake aI users and i hope everyone involved in creating thiis takes a good look in the mirror and fixes their soul www.theverge.com/2025/1/3/243... Juliet Shen / @julietshen : That was fast lol ty @404media.co for sharing that they're already being deleted by Meta (spokespeople say they were created solely for Connect and “managed by people")  —  www.404media.co/metas-ai-pro... Michael Colborne / @colborne : fyi, turns out these are older AI profiles  —  www.404media.co/metas-ai-pro...  [embedded post] Casey Newton / @caseynewton : Great piece from @jasonkoebler.bsky.social and a noteworthy example of Bluesky users noticing something stupid, posting about it a bunch, and driving a whole news cycle.  I expect we're going to see a lot more of that this year ➡️ www.404media.co/metas-ai-pro... Heidi MacDonald / @comixace : I understand these AI characters were from 2023 and have already been deleted.  They were still stupid.  —  www.404media.co/metas-ai-pro... @cbusguy : That blew up pretty quick.  Hopefully they'll ditch all that shit (aka no they won't) [embedded post] Emily Bell / @emilybell : Joel Kaplan's first day is going well [embedded post] Brian Fung / @brianfung.me : These AI accounts are now being deleted as Meta says they were left over from a 2023 test whose results showed *nobody was interacting with the bots*  —  www.404media.co/metas-ai-pro...  [images] Steve Herman / @newsguy : 404 - “The complete failure of Meta's AI profiles shows what we already know: People do not come to social networks to interact with bots, but Meta is obsessed with algorithmically shoving such content down people's throats regardless.” www.404media.co/metas-ai-pro... Mia Sato / @miasato : Im seeing conspiracy theories about the Meta AI bots.  A few points: these profiles date back to 2023 & haven't posted since early 2024.  They had low engagement before this week.  And it seems possible they were kinda abandoned bc they flopped like other Meta AI bots!  —  www.theverge.com/2025/1/3/243... Mia Sato / @miasato : they announced these profiles in 2023, they were just overshadowed by the dumb celebrity AI bot thing. about.fb.com/news/2023/09...  www.theverge.com/2025/1/3/243... Mastodon: John Regehr / @regehr@mastodon.social : meta's AI throwing its creator team under the bus. truly, you could not make this shit up  —  https://www.theguardian.com/ ...  [image] @AAKL@infosec.exchange : Good news, if you missed this.  How the heck does a company decide that a dumb move is actually a wonderful idea?  Does something happen to your corporate brain at a certain point where you are no longer able to distinguish right from wrong? … Rob Vincent / @Rob_T_Firefly@hackers.town : In the 2000s I went back to look at a #Usenet newsgroup which had been a major part of my online life in the 1990s.  All the people had gone, but the spambots were still there.  The entire contents of the group were just bot spam, automatically generated and posted at nobody to be read by no one. … Michael Veale / @mikarv@someone.elses.computer : Nothing more poetic for Meta than a combo of no-one having paid enough attention to their platforms for a year to even notice they launched something manically, absurdly gross, yet can't even avail itself of an ‘AI is improving’ defence as it is actually the result of poorly considered human labour. https://www.404media.co/... Threads: Christopher Mims / @technicallymims : really, really don't get the whole “let's deliberately pollute our social network with AI bots” thing Paul Rietschka / @paul_rietschka : This product strategy has “future HBS case study” written all over it. Renee DiResta / @renee.diresta : My theory is that this is an attempt to compete with character.ai and others that have chat but far less in the way of rich visuals.  —  I personally find this wholly unappealing but the time spent by users of those apps is surprisingly high.  —  RE: https://www.threads.net/... @documentingmeta : Meta : Heres a new thing Online pundits : LOL yet another stupid thing, who needs this? who wants this? nobody asked for this Meta next quarter : 400 million people use the thing Chris Welch / @chriswelch : lol.  This story is getting out of control.  The actual news is well over a year old: https://about.fb.com/... But there's definitely real blowback happening now.  This is a great example of Meta, @zuck, and @mosseri pursuing features that regular people never wanted anything to do with. X: @morningbrew : Meta's AI-generated profiles are starting to show up on Instagram Hello, dead internet [image] @aisafetymemes : Meta released their AI influencers and holy fucking Dead Internet dystopia they took them down in less than 2 hours [image] Philip Lewis / @phil_lewis_ : Here's one of the AI-generated profiles Meta is testing out: [image] Karla Ortiz / @kortizart : There are so many disgusting layers to this fraudulent corporate astro turfing of social media spaces, but it's still wild to me that all that GenAi imagery solely exists because of the works of artists that Meta forcefully took without any consent, credit not compensation. Larry Rosenthal / @larryrosenthal : Everything about this META project is exploitation. Fake people trying to manipulate real people with fake people based on stolen iP from real people. @coopercooperco : Genuinely: who wants this. I just straight up do not understand. Anjali / @anjalivbhatt : impossible to block or report. super cool [image] Matthew Hayes / @matthewhayesiii : The first question is, of course, “are they fucking serious?” Yes, they are. [image] Matthew Hayes / @matthewhayesiii : There's always a chance this is anti-woke ragebait, but the machine seems to stick to the “sassy black girlfriend” bit...until it breaks, like every LLM. [image] Matthew Hayes / @matthewhayesiii : I haven't checked LinkedIn to see if “Dr. Kim” is a real Meta employee, but whoever made the thing is somewhat self-aware that they've created some bullshit. [image] Matthew Hayes / @matthewhayesiii : So I took the bait (and it is bait) and chatted with this LLM. Meta disabled the public profile but you can still DM it. This thing is the nadir of a dead-end, anti-human technology, and everything black women warned about. 🧵 Michael J. Miraflor / @michaelmiraflor : This is an honest question: WHY? Brian McCullough / @brianmcc : This isn't so much a prediction, as much as it is a certainty. Zuck for 20 years watches engagement. If the AI bubble ends, it will end 1-2 quarters from now when Meta pulls back on capex. Cause Zuck will know before anyone when people just don't want it. https://www.techmeme.com/... Max Spero / @max_spero_ : When we approached Meta with an offer to help them deal with their AI spam, they said they were already working on it internally. But turns out they were actually planning on dialing up the amount of AI content on their platforms. Meta just wanted control over the slop Jason Koebler / @jason_koebler : NEW!! The AI accounts have been cyberbullied, Meta is actively deleting the accounts [image] Rat King / @mikeisaac : sorta funny that the product facebook launched a year ago is going viral now after they discontinued it (though for all the wrong reasons...) https://www.404media.co/... Aditya Kumar Saroj / @adikumarsaroj : The dead internet theory is not a theory anymore Meta is now managing AI profiles on Instagram [image] Malick Doucoure / @doucouremalickx : Remove the “AI managed by Meta” and it's totally believable. I wouldn't even question these profiles myself... incoming dead internet theory! [image] @saintjudejones : : there are 13 AI profiles. 3 are anamorphic. 5 are Black. None are East Asian, South Asian, or Hispanic. I'm not shouting conspiracy here, but as Black people are not well represented in Meta's workforce, the over representation here is interesting and intentional. Chaitanya / @chaitanyaontech : Engagement on the platform must be down for Meta to Invest in Ai generated profiles This is your hint to leave their platforms [image] Dr. Jess Maddox / @drjessmaddox : People have found one of Meta's first AI only profiles, and surprise, the AI quality is shit. [image] Joe / @jakuuire : Meta really created an AI profile called “Liv” who is a “proud black queer mother of two” The profile even has AI generated pics The account currently can't be message as it's been removed Do better Meta. Do better [image] Rob Freund / @robertfreundlaw : Other than Meta employees, is there a single person in the entire world who is in favor of them adding AI bot profiles to the platform? If so please comment and explain yourself. Drew / @drewlcb : Meta using AI profiles on one of the biggest social media platforms to push specific narratives will specifically target the most impressionable audiences. There's not one good thing about that. Paschal / @paschal_ik : Meta is testing, or has started to ship, its AI generated profiles, on Instagram. Soon, it would be difficult to tell humans and AI apart. Here is an example profile: https://www.instagram.com/... [image] John Jackson / @hissgoescobra : Meta's new fake AI profiles aren't getting a warm reception from the African Americans community as a whole. I can see where they're coming from on this. Comments are enlightening, baffles me why Meta is doing this. @alexanderfoxetc : I am crying laughing at Meta's new AI profile identifying as an African-American Italian lesbian, and then categorically refusing to back down. Chris P. Bacon / @clay_57 : The Meta AI fake profile “people” are yet another reason to get off social media and force yourself to interact with actual humans. Cam Murdoch / @camfromthecoast : I saw Meta's new AI profile for Hima and made a token called $Hima for laughs. Then it did like $200k in volume in like 30 minutes. Now mfers are asking me to “send it” What have I done, they should really make it harder to launch these things🫠 Trung Phan / @trungtphan : Facebook legit going from your friends >> famous people >> influencers >> algorithmic viral stuff >> AI slop >> AI-generated algorithmic viral influencer slop (haven't seen a post from your friend in 10 years) Adam Singer / @adamsinger : Moderator: our first question comes from Dave from Goldman Sacks Dave: thanks, great quarter guys, so you did +5% active users and +12% engagement, how much of that was AI FB: look, do you want to know the truth or do you want to see us sock a few dingers Jason Koebler / @jason_koebler : The currently viral Meta AI profiles are old and are already inactive because they were such a colossal failure and were indistinguishable from AI spam. This ‘inevitable’ future Zuckerberg is trying to shove down our throats is being completely rejected https://www.404media.co/... Joseph Cox / @josephfcox : New: Meta's AI profiles are indistinguishable from the terrible AI spam that took over Facebook all of last year. The AI bots that are going viral now were actually launched way back in 2023. They were just so bad you didn't even notice https://www.404media.co/... Jake Sanders / @posmarketer : @michaelmiraflor well god damn - the walk of shame used to be 24hrs later, now it's like 30 seconds - turns out most of these AI accounts were launched in 2023, failed, and are now dead, but we just kicked the hornet's nest again for them; 🤷‍♂️ - https://www.404media.co/... Joseph Cox / @josephfcox : New: Meta says it is deleting those AI accounts. 404 Media confirmed that many of them being deleted at the moment https://www.404media.co/... [image] LinkedIn: Ankit Soni : While this would be seen as a failed experiment, the time is not far away when we start seeing a lot of AI generated content on platforms like Meta (Instagram) & Google (Youtube). … Michael Bolton : What, there wasn't enough inane and inaccurate content from *real* people on Facebook and Instagram?  —  Seriously: who thinks this stuff up, and why? … Ross Stevenson : This isn't surprising.  —  The last thing the world needs is AI bots across social media creating more disconnection. … Forums: Hacker News : Meta is killing off its AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles r/DeadInternetTheory : A win?  Meta removes AI character accounts after users criticize them as ‘creepy and unnecessary’ r/CorporateFacepalm : Meta is killing off its own AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles r/JordanPeterson : Meta removes AI character accounts after users criticize them as ‘creepy and unnecessary’ r/LinusTechTips : Meta removes AI character accounts after users criticize them as ‘creepy and unnecessary’ r/technology : Meta removes AI character accounts after users criticize them as ‘creepy and unnecessary’ r/technews : Meta removes AI character accounts after users criticize them as ‘creepy and unnecessary’ r/ArtistHate : Meta's AI-generated bot profiles are not being received well r/technology : Meta's AI Profiles Are Already Polluting Instagram and Facebook With Slop Chobeat To / Beehaw : Meta scrambles to delete its own AI accounts after backlash intensifies | CNN Business Msmash / Slashdot : Meta's AI Profiles Are Indistinguishable From Terrible Spam That Took Over Facebook See also Mediagazer

404 Media 2025-01-05