Meta's new AI-made posts open a Pandora's box
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Meta is testing personalized AI-generated content using a person's interests and likeness. Image: Meta
Meta's plan to generate synthetic content tailored to individual users — which attracted little notice this week amid a slew of product announcements — opens a whole new Pandora's box in an AI world already full of them.
Why it matters: Generative AI has largely been used to create content at the behest of individual users, but now Facebook's parent company says it will proactively surface AI-generated posts based on users' interests.
Driving the news: As part of its slew of announcements on Wednesday at its annual developers conference, Meta said it's "starting to test content imagined for you by Meta AI that will appear in your Facebook and Instagram Feeds."
- Meta said it will generate some images based on a user's interests and others that feature their likeness "so you can be the star of your own story and share your favorites with friends."
- Users will have the option, Meta said, "to take that content in a new direction or swipe to see more content imagined for you in real time."
- People will also be able to opt out of such auto-generated "imagined for you" content, a Meta representative told Axios.
Zoom in: In sample images, Meta showed its AI serving up the kinds of things users can choose to make today, such as stylized images and fantastical scenes.
Between the lines: The move is a logical next step for Meta, which has increasingly been using the Facebook feed to surface content its algorithm thinks you will like, often instead of posts shared by friends.
- Meta has been testing other ways its AI can become part of the conversations on its platforms, including making its tools available within Messenger and a since-scrapped test that had Meta AI posting in the comments sections of social media threads.
Yes, but: So far, a lot of the public reaction to AI-generated content in the realm of media and entertainment has not been enthusiastic, particularly outside gaming.
- Many people — once they get over the amazement that AI can duplicate the sound of a famous voice or generate a few minutes of video — simply lose interest.
- There's a reason so much AI-generated content is now referred to as "slop": Much of it is mediocre, impersonal and monotonous, both thematically and aesthetically.
Our thought bubble: Expect strong reaction — both positive and negative — to the notion of social media platforms proactively serving up personalized AI content.
- We don't know just how far Meta plans to take this — but once it starts to push bot-made posts at us, we should get a sense pretty quickly whether the public is tickled or repelled.
The bottom line: A future where our feeds will be filled with stuff written by a computer rather than a person is not a foregone conclusion. But it's not far off, either.
