Meta deletes all AI character profiles on Facebook, Insta after backlash

Meta shut down its AI character accounts after backlash, NBC News and others have reported.

When Meta introduced these characters in 2023, along with AI personas with celebrity avatars, many on the Internet (re)discovered them this week following a recent incident. Financial Times interview with Meta’s VP of AI manufacturing product, Connor Hayes. Hayes talked about AI characters on Instagram and Facebook, saying, “We expect these AIs to exist, over time, on our platforms, in the same way as accounts.”

“They will have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share AI-powered content on the platform … that’s where we see all of this,” he continued.

Meta shut down its celebrity AI avatars last year, but non-famous AI profiles continue — though many stop posting by 2024, 404 Media reports. I Financial Times the interview, however, caused people to seek out these profiles. What they found were disturbing images of marginalized groups. One example is the profile of the AI ​​Meta character “Liv,” who was described as “Proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller”:

The Tweet may have been deleted

Liv said Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah in interviews that its creators “admit they have no diverse references,” later saying no Black people were involved in its creation.

In addition to Liv, Meta also created profiles like “Grandpa Brian,” a retired black businessman, and “Carter,” a dating coach. The discovery of these profiles led to an uproar at X, Bluesky, and Meta-owned Threads, reports NBC News, and as of publication Meta has removed all 28 AI profiles announced in September 2023 – both celebrity and non-celebrity. .

A spokesperson for Meta told NBC News and 404 Media that these profiles were removed due to a “bug” in users’ ability to block profiles:

There is some confusion: a recent Financial Times article was talking about our vision of AI characters in our platforms in the long run, without announcing any new product…The accounts referred to are from the test that we launched in Connect in 2023. These were run by humans and we were part of the original experiments we did with AI characters. We identified a bug that was interfering with people’s ability to block those AIs and are removing those accounts to fix the problem.