Meta’s Plan to Unleash AI Bot Profiles in its Apps Could Actually Work

If you thought 2024 was a big year for social platforms pushing AI elements into their apps, you haven’t seen anything yet, and Meta wants to bring even more AI to your feeds over the next year.

How will they do it?

Well, aside from injecting AI chatbots into every aspect it can, Meta’s next plan is to deploy millions of generative AI characters and make them pose as real users on Facebook and Instagram.

According to Connor Hayes, Meta’s VP of Gen AI Products, it will be soon a whole host of new AI profiles activates within its applications.

According to Hayes (via The Financial Times):

“We expect that these AIs will actually, over time, exist on our platforms, in much the same way that accounts exist. They will have bios and profile pictures and will be able to generate and share AI-powered content on the platform.”

Which is not overly surprising.

In an interview back in August, CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg explained that:

“Every part of what we do will change in some way [by AI]. [For example] feeds will transition from – you know, it used to be friends’ content, and now it’s mostly creators. In the future, much will be generated by artificial intelligence.”

This seemed to suggest that Zuckerberg predicted that more and more people would eventually start using Meta’s gene AI tools to create images and posts, but not long after, Meta hired an app developer Michael Saymanwho just created Social.ai, an app that allows you to interact with millions of AI robotseach with its own personality and focus.

As such, the path seems pretty clear, with Meta looking to incorporate elements of Social.ai into its core social experiences, thus demonstrating the evolving capacity of its AI models while providing new ways to engage within its apps.

Which, frankly, sounds terrible, and the online backlash was strongly against integrating more bots into social apps.

But then again, most social media users instinctively resist change, and the real question then is, “Will it work?”

If Meta unleashes millions of AI profiles on Facebook and IG, each with its own customized personality, focused on a specific topic and/or area of ​​interest, could it actually increase app usage and engagement?

And the answer, whether you like it or not, is probably yes.

Take, for example, the recent backlash to Threads regarding the difficulty users had in increasing their followers on the app. On Bluesky, which allows users to default to a “Following” feed (as opposed to an algorithm-defined “For You” stream), many creators have claimed that it’s much easier to gain followers and build their own audience, because unlike threads, where it seems the growth of followers stops quite quickly.

Frightened by the meteoric rise of Bluesky, Threads tried to address this by updating its algorithm to put more emphasis on content from the profiles you follow in your feed.

But really, you’ll never gain followers like you did on Twitter or Facebook in the past, because modern social media algorithms are more focused on engagement and show you more content that’s similar to what you’re already engaging with. That approach, led by TikTok, has allowed platforms to capture more stream time, and as such, they’d rather you rely on their recommendation algorithms and “For You” feeds, as opposed to curating your own follow experience.

The end result, then, is that you don’t really have to follow anyone anymore, because you can just rely on the system to show you more things you’ll like. Which, consequently, means that people are no longer following profiles at the same rates as before.

As such, increasing the number of followers will be difficult, but at the same time, creators are also attuned to this as an indicator of growth and want to see that number grow.

And considering that only a small fraction of social media users post anything at all, Meta knows that it needs to make those users happy.

So what happens if Meta launches millions of AI bots, all of which are directed to follow profiles related to their topics?

Now you’re getting thousands of followers a day, and Meta can unleash a bunch more to keep those numbers growing. These bots will also be able to interact with your updates, asking questions, providing answers and giving you encouraging notes.

Sure, they’re bots, but do you really think users will care?

That’s the key question: Will the fact that it’s artificial engagement significantly reduce the dopamine rush people get when they open the app and see they’ve got tons of likes, comments, and new followers every time they share an update?

I’d like to think they will, but in reality I doubt they won’t.

We’ve already seen people use the “follow after follow” tactic to increase their numbers and make themselves feel like they’re popular, even though the people following them have no real interest in what they’re posting. We’ve seen people pay for bot followers as a means of increasing perceived relevance, we’ve seen people buy likes to get that hit of engagement and/or relevance.

People know that much of the engagement on social media is already fake. So do you really think they’re going to be suspicious if these new bots inflate their numbers in a new way?

I suspect that many, many users will simply feel good about getting attention and that Meta’s AI bots will actually increase engagement as a result. Of course, it’s not real, “social” interaction as we more often define it. But then again, if the numbers go up, I imagine many will welcome it.

There is also practical value in having AI bots as a sounding board of sorts, providing alternative considerations to your updates. You can post, “What should I have for dinner?” for example, and get responses from an Italian chef bot, a French chef bot, a healthy food bot, a deals and coupons bot, etc. That might actually be helpful, and there are a number of ways those answers might provide value as well.

Of course, this would also have an impact on influencers and those who are trying to present themselves for cooperation with the brand. Brands will need to differentiate even more about which “influencers” they work with, because if 70% of their followers are actually AI bots, then they won’t be of much value to your promotions.

But with that consideration aside, and the introduction of a disclosure tag to indicate AI bots (I doubt Meta will try to hide this where they can), I actually see this being a winning strategy for the company.

It sounds bad, and the last thing we probably need is more bot accounts inside social apps. But in practical application, you can imagine that many users will be happy to get that extra engagement, be it artificial or not.

If the numbers go up, all other considerations will, I suppose, disappear.