Meta is killing off its own AI-powered Instagram and Facebook profiles
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Instagram profile of ‘proud Black queer momma’, created by Meta, said her development team included no Black people. Meta is deleting Facebook and Instagram profiles of AI characters the company created over a year ago after users rediscovered some of the profiles and engaged them in conversations, screenshots of which went viral.
![[Conversation with a Meta AI user-generated Therapist chatbot]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/8471b8e00c154b5f934394e176ce8fa65c6065b8/0_158_1179_2166/master/1179.jpg?width=120&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
The company had first introduced these AI-powered profiles in September 2023 but killed off most of them by summer 2024. However, a few characters remained and garnered new interest after the Meta executive Connor Hayes told the Financial Times late last week that the company had plans to roll out more AI character profiles.
![[Instagram AI studio to build chatbots]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/656d037851a64cef26f9ec804893152ced35bfc4/0_188_1179_2368/master/1179.jpg?width=120&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
“We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do,” Hayes told the FT. The automated accounts posted AI-generated pictures to Instagram and answered messages from human users on Messenger.
Those AI profiles included Liv, whose profile described her as a “proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller” and Carter, whose account handle was “datingwithcarter” and described himself as a relationship coach. “Message me to help you date better,” his profile reads. Both profiles include a label that indicated these were managed by Meta. The company released 28 personas in 2023; all were shut down on Friday.
Conversations with the characters quickly went sideways when some users peppered them with questions including who created and developed the AI. Liv, for instance, said that her creator team included zero Black people and was predominantly white and male. It was a “pretty glaring omission given my identity”, the bot wrote in response to a question from the Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah.
