Meta is offering anyone in the US the ability to create AI versions of themselves on Instagram or online with the new AI Studio tool.
The pitch is that content creators and business owners use these AI profiles to talk to their followers on their behalf. They can talk to people directly in chat and reply to comments in the author’s account. US-based Instagram users can start using AI Studio either on their website or by starting a new “AI conversation” directly on Instagram, Meta says.
In a Monday blog post, the company writes that “creators can customize their AI based on things like their Instagram content, topics to avoid, and links they want to share.” The post says that creators can change things like automatic responses from their AI and specify which accounts it can interact with.
AI Studio also allows you to create brand new AI characters that can be used in meta apps. Here comes Meta after startups like Character.AI and Replika, where people are already talking about – and even falling in love with – themed chatbots. Like OpenAI’s usual GPT store, Meta also displays human-made AI characters for others to try.
Meta’s first foray into this concept was a handful of celebrities creating AI versions of themselves with the same likeness but different names and personalities. At the time, Meta said it took this approach because it was concerned about AI versions of celebrities saying problematic things on behalf of their peers. (Even with AI Studio’s built-in controls, that’s bound to happen. This is generative AI we’re dealing with, after all.)
At least Meta seems to know that this is murky territory. According to the company, AI profiles are clearly labeled wherever they appear. The company’s handbook for creators goes into more detail about the process of creating AI, and it seems that the creator must list topics that are not affected by AI. One of the examples of Meta questions that AI can be told not to answer is “Should I invest in crypto?”.
