Meta is actively exploring the application of artificial intelligence in social media platforms, and plans to integrate AI-generated profiles into Facebook and Instagram to make them a regular part of the platform. The move aims to improve user interaction and platform attractiveness, but it also raises concerns about the authenticity of information and content quality. Meta has taken steps to label AI-generated content, but its effectiveness remains to be seen. This article will delve into Meta’s AI strategy, analyze its potential opportunities and challenges, and the impact of AI technology on user experience and social media ecology.
Meta is laying the groundwork for the future, with plans to let AI-generated profiles interact with regular users on Facebook and Instagram. Some of the tools are already starting to come to market, and Meta hopes these AI characters will become a regular part of its social network.
Connor Hayes, Meta's vice president of generative AI, said the company expects that over time, AI characters will become part of the social platform and have the same functionality as human accounts, including bios, profile pictures and the ability to post content. "These AIs will be able to exist on our platform just like accounts," Hayes told the Financial Times.
Meta will start piloting AI character creation tools in the United States in July 2024, and hundreds of thousands of new AI materials have been generated. Although most users set these AI characters to private, this move still provides valuable data for Meta to explore new ways of interacting.
Meta believes that this AI integration will make its application more attractive and help increase user interaction. Hayes emphasized that making AI more social on the platform will be a focus over the next two years. Currently, many content creators are already using Meta's AI tools to enhance existing content, such as retouching photos. However, the celebrity AI version launched by Meta in the fall of 2023 has not yet attracted much attention.
While this development brings huge opportunities, Becky Owen, former head of Meta's creator innovation team, warned that the emergence of AI characters may bring certain risks. She noted that criminals could use these AI characters to spread disinformation. And compared to human creators, AI characters lack real-world experience, genuine emotion, and authenticity, which can lead to platforms being flooded with low-quality content.
Meta has said that all AI-generated content will be clearly labeled, but enforcement remains challenging. Although audiovisual content can be annotated with a "CC" tag, AI-generated tagging of text still requires active user selection.
Meta is currently testing how to incorporate AI-generated personalized content into Facebook and Instagram feeds, which automatically adjusts to user preferences and trends and further shapes what users see through interaction. This highly personalized content can increase user dwell time, but whether it can effectively increase advertising revenue remains to be seen.
However, AI content may also bring challenges to Meta's advertising business. In particular, advertising needs to be paired with high-quality content to more easily obtain effective user interaction. Whether Meta can find a balance between increasing ad revenue and maintaining content quality remains a key question.
With the emergence of personalized AI chatbots like Character.ai, the impact of artificial intelligence on people's lives has become increasingly significant. While these chatbots can provide companionship, alleviate loneliness, and inspire positive emotions with supportive messages, they also raise concerns about emotional dependence. Especially when AI gradually becomes "like humans", users will easily develop emotional bonds. This phenomenon is particularly obvious in some extreme cases.
For example, a 14-year-old user committed suicide after communicating with a chatbot for a long time, which attracted widespread social attention. The incident has also prompted people to think deeply about the risks of emotional dependence, which may become more serious with the development of more anthropomorphic functions such as voice.
While Meta's AI strategy brings many possibilities, it also requires careful handling of potential risks. How to strike a balance between technological progress and social responsibility will be an important issue facing Meta and even the entire technology industry in the future. Balancing user experience, content quality and commercial interests is the key to Meta's future success.