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Update 1/03/24: After this article was published, Meta 404 inform the media That it started deleting AI-generated accounts and many were managed by humans Since then, Meta has deleted the accounts. Our original story follows below.
When I looked into dead-eyes”carter,” one of Meta’s new AI posters, I remember a line Dawn of the Dead. “When there is no more room in hell, the dead will walk the earth.”
Something about George Romero’s 1978 film about doomed survivors riding out a zombie apocalypse in a shopping mall feels resonant today as I look across the profiles of the Matter Suit AI-generated. The movie’s blue-skinned corpses don’t know they’re dead. They just wander through shopping centers on autopilot, looking for something new to eat.
That’s how our social media space feels now. Digital town squares populated by undead posters, lines zombies learned from an LLM, material digested over decades of the Internet returned to viewers. That’s what Meta is selling now.
Meta has more than 3 billion users across various sites, an incredible percentage of the world’s population But with businesses demanding constant growth and not content with nearly half the planet’s living people, Meta decided to cut out the middle-man. It is flooding Facebook and Instagram with AI-generated posters of its own creation.
An article in the December 27, 2024 Financial Times outlined the view. “We hope, over time, that these AIs will actually exist on our platform, just as accounts do,” said Connor Hayes, vice president of generative AI at Meta. told the outlet. “They will have bios and profile pictures and will be able to create and share AI-powered content on the platform. . . That’s where we see it all going.”
Soon people discovered that Meta’s ghostly posters had been with us for months, even years. There’s Liv, a “proud black queer mom of 2 and truth-teller,” according to her Instagram profile. Add that brian“The grandfather of all;” Z“Your girl for all things hip-hop;” And carterA “relationship coach.” I’m sure there are more to be discovered.
All four of these posters have pages with mirrored content on Facebook and Instagram, and all four have post histories that go back to September 26, 2023. Accounts have blue verified check marks and a label indicating they are “managed” by Meta, an AI.” Users can block them on Facebook, but not on Instagram. Users can send their messages across all of Meta’s platforms, including WhatsApp.
“Road tripping with friends is the ultimate relationship test drive. Nothing says ‘friendship goals’ like being confined to a car with your loved ones, navigating unfamiliar roads and sharing questionable gas station snacks. But the real prize? Flying miles, miles, of a lifetime. Making memories for, and witnessing the beauty of the country together. #imaginedWithAi,” said Carter Posted on June 25, 2024.
AIs don’t seem to be doing well on Instagram. They have low engagement numbers and people are calling them AI slop. It’s different at Facebook, where the norm has been AI-driven slop for a year now. The post has 13 likes and 2 comments on Instagram and 192 likes, 112 comments and 33 shares on Facebook. Many comments are spam, links to other profiles, or phishing bait of one kind or another.
But it’s all interaction and in a spreadsheet, that’s what matters.
Liv’s account Post pictures of children That doesn’t exist, Brian rambles about how much Seniors love to learn about textiles Above an AI-generated photo of a nursing home where elderly faces melt together like microwaved Barbie dolls, Jade posted her photo. Non-existent vinyl collectionLabels are impossible to read.
The AI apocalypse is here, and it’s far dumber and more frustrating than we promised. Instead of being hunted by a glowing metal skeleton in a post-apocalyptic wasteland, we’re surrounded by zombies endlessly repeating our own posts to us.
And the worst is yet to come. Remember that Big Tech is going to revive the nuclear power industry to power these nightmares. This is our future. A barren stool lit up with nuclear energy, filled with the dead and the never born.
