
Meta envisions a world where digital and physical realities blend seamlessly, fostering deeper social connections and immersive experiences.
After making huge successes with its social media platforms and its various acquisitions, Meta stepped up its vision by building a world around the metaverse—a virtual environment where people can interact, work, and play using augmented and virtual reality technologies.
Meta's focus at the time was creating a future driven by shared virtual spaces, empowering users to connect beyond the limitations of geography. The aim was to revolutionize how people experience communication, entertainment, and productivity.
But after burning through tens of billions of dollars, metaverse was kind of a flop concept, and the company was forced to lay off thousands of talented individuals in the aftermath of that gamble.
This time, the tech giant has strained to reinvent itself as a company poised to capitalize on the overhyped AI revolution.
After developing a range of AI products designed to compete with Large Language Models from OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and others, Meta is now exploring ways to integrate its AI initiatives with its social media platforms.
Founder and CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg previously introduced animated AI chatbots modeled after celebrities like Snoop Dogg, MrBeast, Paris Hilton, and Kendall Jenner.
Building on that concept, why not expand further and create even more?
In early 2024, the company debuted AI Studio, where users can create their own chatbots, including wholly fictional characters.
Or, in the case of popular creators who want followers to feel more connected, the chatbots are "AI that can message with your audience on your behalf, mimicking your tone and expressions."
This time, Meta is taking the next step, which is integrating these AI creations as part of Facebook and Instagram, by making them "users" themselves.
The hope is that these semi-independent custom avatars will prove more engaging to the young people who are crucial to the survival of Meta’s flagship social networks.
Meta hopes that these new AI users on the platfrom will help drive engagement on Facebook and Instagram.
"We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do," Connor Hayes, Meta’s vice-president of product for generative AI.
"They’ll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform … that’s where we see all of this going."

This is nothing surprising, because back in August, Zuckerberg explained that AI has always been part of his social media.
"Every part of what we do is going to get changed in some way [by AI]. [For example] feeds are going to go from - you know, it was already friend content, and now it’s largely creators. In the future, a lot of it is going to be AI generated," he said.
While the feature can make Facebook and Instagram more lively, there is a risk that these types of accounts can create low quality content that contains misinfromation.
Besides alienating human users, these accounts can cause further troubles when human users start abusing the feature to bloat up interactions, for example.
Having AI followers would impact influencers who try to pitch themselves for brand collaboration, for example. Brands these people try to connect would have to be more discerning in which “influencers” they work with, if a high percentage of their followers are actually bots.

Not to mention that Facebook and Instagram cannot have more users than the internet itself, as one of the reasons why it began opting for having AI-powered users.
"Without robust safeguards, platforms risk amplifying false narratives through these AI-driven accounts," said Becky Owen, former head of Meta’s creator innovations team.
It's worth noting that Meta has also hired app developer Michael Sayman, who had created Social.ai, an app that enables users to interact with millions of AI bots, each with their own personality and focus.
Read: 'SocialAI' Creates A Bot-Driven Social Media To Give Humans A Safer Place And Imaginary Friends