Facebook Thinks AI Bots Will Be Your New Social Media Friends

[cpvr]

Facebook will soon be rolling out a new feature where you’ll be interactive with AI bots on their platform. Coming from Facebook this doesn’t surprise me at all.

They’re seeking ways to boast their engagement on their platform, so they believe that implementing AI bots will help them do so, but who wants to interact with AI bots on a social media platform that was originally created for you to stay in touch with friends and family?

Are we at the point where AI bots will now be implemented on more social media sites after Facebook does this?

Real human friends are soon to be out-of-date in Silicon Valley. Instead, your new social media friend will soon be an artificial intelligence bot, according to one executive from Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company.

Connor Hayes, Meta’s vice president of product for generative AI, told the Financial Times last week that the company expects AI bots will “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,” Hayes added.

Meta, led by CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is increasingly turning to AI to spur user engagement. In July, the company introduced its AI Studio tool, allowing users to create AI characters. The AI characters will serve as “an extension” of its users and be able to respond to direct messages and story replies for other social media friends, Meta said when the tool was first introduced.

The company also teased a new AI tool in October that allows users to make 16 second videos based on text prompts; the tool, dubbed Movie Gen, is expected to roll out in 2025.

Meta’s bet on AI bots could be seen as a new, creative way to keep users on its platforms and off of rival apps like TikTok and YouTube. (Those two platforms were recently found by Pew Research Center to be the most popular apps among American teenagers.)

It is also a move that comes as Meta is running out of new people to join its social network. Meta reported 3.29 billion people used at least one of its apps — Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger — on a daily basis by the end of Q3. Two years prior, the company had 2.93 billion people using at least one of its apps daily.

Meta and Zuckerberg have shown a willingness to bet big on other emerging technologies in recent years, with mixed results. The company has put billions of dollars into getting the Metaverse, its virtual reality platform where users interact with one another using computer-generated likenesses, off of the ground. Zuckerberg called the Metaverse the “holy grail” of social media experiences in 2022, but so far it has not gained much traction, and the company has not shared an update on how many of its users have joined it.

Source: Facebook Thinks AI Bots Will Be Your New Social Media Friends

 

[Demon_skeith]

Ugh, thats worse than paying people to post randomly. Does FB have no shame?

 

[Jason]

This stuff could be dangerous for unpopular people because they will want them as sexual companions and then instead of these people improving themselves, they will just settle for the fantasy. It's the same thing you see in many porn addicts probably.

I mean, some people are rejected for unjust reasons, but to some degree, the person is responsible for the rejection because they have real personality faults.

 

[uptrendfinancialsignal]

As for me, I do not understand and do not like this step of Facebook. Of course AI bots can be useful in many things, however, I do not think they will replace the real connections. AI bots might help to increase engagement rates, but it’s often nothing more than fake communication with a kind of fake personalities

 

[Zani]

This is not an interesting news at all. I never liked the way that some sites are making use of chat bots as their customer care. If it happen on Facebook, it's better to deactivate than chat with bots.

 

[Kross]

From the interactions that I have had with AI bots on forums and customer support, I don't think that I need AI bot as a social media friend. They don't give that vibes enough to be social media friends.

 

[cpvr]

This is not an interesting news at all. I never liked the way that some sites are making use of chat bots as their customer care. If it happen on Facebook, it's better to deactivate than chat with bots.

Their self moderation tools can be quite annoying. I've seen their AI accounts on Instagram and Threads along with Facebook thus far. There's a setting in Instagram itself where you can create an AI character as well.

The Chat bot support system is difficult to deal with as well.

 

[Alicia]

Using chat bots on Facebook will allow chase users to another social media platform. I like my chatting to be human like and not robot like.