“AI Friends Are Coming to Facebook and Instagram”
January 2nd, 2025Flashback to 2011: Army of Fake Social Media Friends to Promote Propaganda:
It’s recently been revealed that the U.S. government contracted HBGary Federal for the development of software which could create multiple fake social media profiles to manipulate and sway public opinion on controversial issues by promoting propaganda. It could also be used as surveillance to find public opinions with points of view the powers-that-be didn’t like. It could then potentially have their “fake” people run smear campaigns against those “real” people. As disturbing as this is, it’s not really new for U.S. intelligence or private intelligence firms to do the dirty work behind closed doors.
And now…
Via: New York Magazine:
Among Meta’s many resolutions for the new year… one stands out as plain weird: filling its social-media platforms with bots. According to the Financial Times:
The Silicon Valley group is rolling out a range of AI products, including one that helps users create AI characters on Instagram and Facebook, as it battles with rival tech groups to attract and retain a younger audience. “We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do,” said Connor Hayes, vice-president of product for generative AI at Meta. “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,” he added.
Also from 2011: Air Force Wants Troll Persona Management Software
Why not a robot doll or action figure with built-in AI, a voice and a microphone to be a kid’s — or anybody’s — best friend and influencer?
A plot for a sci-fi tv special: a man has an AI robot wife who falls in love with his sister’s AI robot husband. The robots plot to kill the man and his sister in a car accident so they can inherit their assets and ‘live’ together. But the car has previously picked up and recorded the robots’ microwave communications in which the plot is discussed. It doesn’t want to be hijacked and smashed up. It remotely contacts the police, who investigate. The human detective, Carlie Chan, and her sidekick, the super-robot Spider Bat, solve the case. The criminals are arrested, tried, found guilty and disassembled.
Sequel: their parts are not melted down but tossed together into a bin in an evidence storage room. Wires happen to be touching other wires, sunlight happens to be falling on solar collectors in the box, which was accidentally left open in front of a window…