Meta deletes all AI character profiles on Facebook and Instagram after backlash

According to NBC News and other reports, Meta has closed the AI ​​character account after receiving backlash.

Meta announced these characters in 2023, along with AI personas featuring celebrity avatars, but this week, following a recent Financial Times interview with Connor Hayes, Meta’s vice president of generative AI products. I (re)discovered many of these characters online. “We expect these AIs to actually exist on our platforms over time, just like accounts,” Hayes said, referring to AI characters on Instagram and Facebook. ” he said.

“They’ll have a bio and a profile picture, and they’ll be able to generate and share AI-powered content on the platform…that’s where we’re going with everything going forward,” he continued. Ta.

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Meta stopped offering AI avatars of celebrities last year, but continued to offer AI profiles of ordinary people, many of which stopped posting in 2024, 404 Media reported. But the Financial Times interview prompted people to seek out these profiles. What they found was an offensive portrayal of marginalized groups. As an example, Meta’s AI character profile “Liv” is described as a “proud black queer mom of two and truth teller.”

Tweet may have been deleted

In a chat with Washington Post columnist Karen Attia, Liv said its creators “admitted there was a lack of diverse references” and later said no Black people were involved in its creation. said.

In addition to Liv, Meta created profiles such as “Grandpa Brian,” a retired black businessman, and “Carter,” a dating coach. The discovery of these profiles led to an uproar in threads owned by X, Bluesky, and Meta, with NBC News reporting that, at the time of publication, Meta had all 28 AI profiles announced in September 2023. Deleted (both celebrities and ordinary people).

A Meta spokesperson told NBC News and 404 Media that the profiles were removed because there was a “bug” in the ability for users to block profiles.

There is some confusion: the recent Financial Times article is about our vision for long-term AI characters on our platform and is not a new product announcement… From a test started with Connect. These were managed by humans. These were some of the early experiments we did with AI characters. We identified a bug that was impacting the ability to block these AIs and are removing these accounts to resolve the issue.