Instagram’s new “AI Studio” will let creators build AI chatbot versions of themselves, and Meta will begin rolling out in the U.S. as an “early test,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on his Instagram channel on Thursday.
As part of the tests, Zuckerberg said, “In the coming weeks, you may start to see AI from your favorite creators and based on your interests on Instagram. For now, these will appear mostly in Messages and will be clearly labeled as AI.”
Zuckerberg shared some videos of his conversations with creator-made AI chatbots. On the creators’ Instagram, you can tap the “Message” button to start a conversation. A notification at the top says the messages are generated by AI and “some may be inaccurate or inappropriate.” (Hopefully, Meta’s system will stop these creator-made AIs from saying nasty things.) On Meta, creators’ names are also preceded by “AI.” andAt least for now, I’ll put a “beta” tag after that person’s name.
“We’ve been working closely with creators to build these AIs to help them answer questions from their followers and chat with people in ways that are helpful and fun,” Zuckerberg said. “It’s still early days, and this is the first beta of these AIs, so we’ll continue to improve them and make them available to more people soon.”
in New InterviewsZuckerberg further elaborated on the company’s AI strategy. He said, “People want to interact with different people and businesses, and different AIs need to be built to reflect people’s different interests.” Meta wants to empower creators and ultimately small businesses to “build their own AI” and interact with their communities and customers. “We think that will create a much more engaging experience and be more dynamic and useful than having a single thing that people use.” He also said Meta will allow people to create AI characters that don’t necessarily represent themselves.
Broadly speaking, it’s a vision the company has had for some time. Zuckerberg made similar remarks in an interview with colleague Alex Heath last year, when the company unveiled its Meta AI assistant and celebrity-themed chatbots. Now that the company is testing AI Studio in the wild, it’ll tell us whether people really want to chat with AI versions of their favorite creators.