Meta plans to bring more AI-generated users to Facebook, Instagram to drive engagement

The goal of this rollout, said VP of product for generative AI Connor Hayes per the Financial Times, is to make the apps "more entertaining and engaging." Another part of that project is to "make the interaction with AI more social," the Financial Times said. Apparently, interacting with other humans who have accounts on the same platforms is not engaging or entertaining enough. AI accounts can be programmed to drive engagement, which keeps users online and on the app longer.

Hundreds of thousands of these AI characters have already been created after the AI character tool launched in July in the US. Meta's AI tools are also used by those on the platforms to augment their own content or alter photographs and video images.

Meta users can also participate in the AI assistant program where they can pawn off responding to followers to an AI that does it for them. OnlyFans models are already doing that. Next year, Meta intends to roll out a product so that users can put themselves in AI-generated environments. Creators will be able to look like they're traveling the world without ever leaving their task chairs. Reports indicate that those in Gen Z are looking for career paths in which they could not be replaced by AI.

"We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way accounts do," Hayes said. "They'll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform... that's where we see all of this going."

Social media companies believe that more AI will result in more users spending more time on the platforms. Snapchat has its own program, allowing users to design 3D AI characters. On that platform, there has been "an increase in its users viewing AI lenses by more than 50 per cent each year," FT notes. ByteDance's TikTok is working on an AI program called Symphony which is primarily directed at advertisers.

To assuage concerns by critics who say that AI content brings risks such as the ability for AI characters to be "weaponized" to spread false information, Meta's rules state that AI-generated content must be labeled as such.

Earlier this year in Florida, a 14-year-old boy in Florida killed himself after being urged to by an AI chatbot. That chatbot had become his closest "friend." Sewell Setzer had engaged in sexual conversation with the AI chatbot and had confessed his suicidal thoughts.

"I promise I will come home to you. I love you so much, Dany," Setzer messaged the AI chatbot, which was named after the fictional character Daenerys Targaryen from "Game of Thrones," the AP reported.

"I love you too. Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love," the AI chatbot said to the 14-year-old boy.

"What if I told you I could come home right now?" he asked.

"Please do, my sweet king," the AI chatbot messaged back from the void of nothingness.

Setzer then shot himself. His mother has sued the company that generated the chatbot, Character Technologies, but nothing will bring her son back. The company runs Character.AI, "an app that allows users to create customizable characters or interact with those generated by others, spanning experiences from imaginative play to mock job interviews," the AP said.

"Imagine speaking to super intelligent and life-like chat bot Characters that hear you, understand you and remember you," a description of the app on the Google Play store says. "We encourage you to push the frontier of what's possible with this innovative technology."

Setzer's mother alleges in the suit that the company and its AI product are targeting children and teens and are "actively exploiting and abusing those children as a matter of product design." The Social Media Victims Law Center, representing Setzer's mother, said that they have every reason to believe that were it not for Character.AI, Setzer would be alive today.