Meta saying it expects AI characters to populate its apps is its friendly rebrand of an effective but alienating overhaul meant to automate social interactions
nymag.com/intelligence... @hypervisible : “A lot of formerly social aspects of a platform like Facebook, in other words, have already been automated and replaced with machine learning, but each step in this direction has been subtle and somewhat concealed...” John Herrman / @jwherrman : Meta's fake AI users sound like an abrupt and bizarre plan. But they're just another step in a long, subtle process of alienating social automation nymag.com/intelligence... [images] Mastodon: Drew Breunig / @dbreunig@note.computer : I tend to think the Ashley Madison leak, where it was revealed most of the “women” on it were bots is the most foreshadowing story of this era. — Networks will continue to hack our perception like orchids tricking pollinators, so long as PM's keeping using engagement as their key metric. … X: Andrew Curran / @andrewcurran_ : META will have their videogen running on platform by next year. Google is currently integrating Veo into YouTube. I think Elon is training an Aurora style video model for X. Real-time avatars, trained on your social media history, will probably arrive at around the same time. [image] Justine Bateman / @justinebateman : - Be very slow to believe anything you see online. - Foster a spiritual life so you are in touch with your instincts. - Don't use generative #AI. Whatever the task is, do it for yourself. You're more than capable. - The tech bros just want to separate you from your money and Tim Pool / @timcast : Dead internet theory is just fact now Viv / @battleangelviv : imagine being so bad at fighting bots that you declare them a feature lol Pekka Kallioniemi / @p_kallioniemi : Meta won't resist an AI takeover. Instead, it will create a large number of highly engaging (and probably highly attractive) AI profiles to interact with real users. Eventually, neither people nor these AI profiles will be able to tell whether they are interacting with real Kev / @awestruckvox : so it's no longer a dead internet “theory” just a dead internet reality 🙂 Whitney Webb / @_whitneywebb : The Kissinger/Eric Schmidt book on AI basically states that the real promise of AI, from their perspective, is as a tool of perception manipulation - that eventually people will not be able to interpret or perceive reality without the help of an AI via cognitive diminishment and learned helplessness... @nnewsteevie : They're actually adding NPCs to social media this sucks Forums: Hacker News : Meta Wants More AI Bots on Facebook and Instagram r/interesting : Meta plans to add AI-generated users to Instagram and Facebook See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Meta's AI-character strategy follows an uneven product path: it dropped celebrity chatbots and shifted toward user-customized avatars, suggesting the company is still searching for a scalable form of synthetic participation.
The proposal also sits in a widening debate over whether feeds should contain simulated people at all. A bot-populated social app made that premise explicit, while Meta's approach places it inside already-established social networks.
First-order effects
- Meta's stated direction makes AI characters a prospective layer of Facebook and Instagram participation, rather than a standalone chatbot feature.
- The company must manage the trust cost of presenting automated interaction in products whose value has traditionally depended on human relationships; the later backlash over viral AI profiles shows how quickly that distinction can become salient.
Second-order effects
- Users, creators, and advertisers gain a stronger incentive to distinguish human activity from synthetic engagement, raising the product importance of labeling, controls, and credible provenance.
- Rival social platforms face a clearer strategic split: embrace abundant synthetic participation to sustain activity, or differentiate around more explicitly human networks.
Third-order effects
- If major platforms normalize AI characters inside social feeds, the scarce asset shifts from content volume to confidence about who—or what—is participating.
- That shift is likely to intensify scrutiny of anthropomorphic design and disclosure, particularly where automated accounts can shape perceived consensus or social attention.
The trend: This is part of the move from social platforms as networks of people toward platforms that algorithmically supply both content and participants.