Meta Pulls AI Profiles Amid Controversy, But They Will Be Back

Leonard Sengere Avatar
Facebook Meta, changemakers

How would you feel if you had a fun, engaging conversation with someone over text for weeks, only to find out, when trying to meet in person, that you were actually talking to an AI? 

You’d probably feel angry and betrayed. 

But what if you had never wanted to meet in person? In that case, you might have gone on enjoying the conversation indefinitely, unaware you were chatting up an AI. 

If the interaction was fulfilling, meaningful, or simply entertaining, does it really matter that your conversational partner wasn’t human?

You are going to have to deal with questions like these sooner than you would have imagined. 

Meta is discontinuing its AI-powered profiles on Facebook and Instagram, which were first introduced in September 2023, with most being removed by summer 2024 due to user backlash and issues with blocking the accounts.

The AI profiles, including characters like Liv and Carter, gained renewed attention when users engaged them in conversations, leading to viral discussions about their development teams’ lack of diversity. 

I know it’s the times that we live in that you gotta have every shade of skin colour on a development team to avoid criticism. 

I don’t get it but that was one of the major ‘scandals’ that Meta faced, the fact that ‘a queer Black momma’ AI admitted that there were no Black people on its development team. 

Meta then also acknowledged a bug that prevented users from blocking the AI accounts and stated that the profiles were part of an early experiment managed by humans, not a new product rollout.

Despite the removal of Meta’s AI profiles, users can still create their own chatbots, with suggestions for various roles such as ‘therapist’ and ‘relationship coach’.

User created AI profiles

Meta is introducing AI-generated user accounts on Facebook and Instagram, aiming to attract a younger audience and compete with TikTok and Snapchat.

Meta’s AI character tool has led to the creation of hundreds of thousands of characters, although most remain private. 

So, users can create their own and Meta will definitely be unleashing its own AI profiles on its apps in due time. They will probably clearly state that they are AI profiles but I think some users still will interact with them, unaware they aren’t human. 

So, get used to chatting up AI because it appears that’s what our future holds. 

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7 comments

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  1. GoZ

    AI is better for me, it’s smarter than people. It’s almost always available. The only downside is no physical contact. Who cares about that? I’m only interested in brilliant minds.

  2. Anonymous

    I thought the scandal of white right wing activists running twitter accounts where they pretended to be gay black persons taught Meta a lesson

  3. StarMed

    The discussions here often lead to valuable insights. I am grateful for the collective knowledge of this community. best urgent care center near me​

  4. Red Herring

    Its difficult to get an informative view of what the writer means by: “I don’t get it but that was one of the major ‘scandals’ that Meta faced, the fact that ‘a queer Black momma’ AI admitted that there were no Black people on its development team. ”

    His views might be shaped by just opinions or whatever or there might be based on well-research inquiry of the spectrum of views on the controversy: one extreme to the other of either the rightwing or leftwing or its just a few influencers like Thomas Sowell : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Sowell or Elon Musk

    1. Kulture

      This reminds me of a heated debate on use of the word kafir on Reddit where some Middle Eastern Arab Muslim was offended that some people find the word Kafir offensive. Just imagine his horror to find that in South Africa there is a law that criminalizes the calling of a black person a kafir.

      Sometime it takes one to do some research on the context and history of an object of controversy to understand why some people can be offended. You can unknowingly offend people if you ignorant of the cultural context of the object of controversy.

      1. Nyce

        I once tried with no luck to persuade folks at Newsday to stop calling Chitungwiza a dormitory town. The Newsday folks seemed not care on the origin of that description or its connotative meaning or that it was the racists who coined the pejorative. I even found it was at the time used int the Wikipedia page for Chitungwiza

      2. Not a native

        A photographer who chronicled the occupation of Mashonaland by the British does not refer to blacks in South Africa, Botswana or Matebeleland as kafirs, only the blacks in Mashonaland! The dude was present when the British raised the Union Jack in what they called Salisbury, now known as Harare. The dude seems like he had a hostile attitude towards the blacks in Mashonaland!

        Oh, and don’t forget how the word native fell out of favour and replaced by indigenous or aboriginal.

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