(Credit: Meta)
Social media is getting interesting, or more creepy, depending on who you ask.
Meta is in the process of debuting 28 new AI-generated profiles. First announced in September at its Meta Connect conference, the first few profiles use celebrity likenesses from Kendall Jenner, Snoop Dogg, and Tom Brady.
These A-listers raked in an estimated $5 million for handing over the rights to their faces, Business Insider reports. Meta is now using those visages to create new "characters." Snoop Dogg is a dungeon master, Tom Brady is a bro named Bru, and Kendall Jenner is a "PR girlie" dedicated to female empowerment.
But even with these new personas, the videos of them moving around the rectangular frames in their profiles is so realistic that Meta created a label to identify them. "When the content is AI-generated, you'll see an icon on the bottom left of the image along with #ImaginedWithAI in the caption," reads a post published to all of the current characters' profiles yesterday.
The bottom-left corner of this image from AI Snoop Dogg's profile, contains the icon. Though hard to read, it says "imagined with AI," as does the caption.
"Meta partnered with cultural icons and creators to play and embody some of these AIs," reads another image in the post. "That means the content you see of a celebrity is actually the celebrity playing a character."
A Meta engineering lead who declined to be named told PCMag that the Snoop Dogg profile is Mark Zuckerberg's favorite, and that the company sees AI-generated characters as a way to juice up influencer culture by creating a new way to interact with online personas.
Anyone can chat with these profiles through Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp; look for the "Create an AI chat" option when you start a new chat.
Eventually, Meta plans to make them available through video. However, the company still seems to be working on AI-generated video for the characters, as the new "imagined with AI" icon is currently only on the static image posts.