If you've ever fantasized about having an AI clone of yourself that can answer questions and dish out advice on your behalf, Meta's new AI Studio is promising to help you do just that – if you live in the US.
Meta describes its AI Studio, which is rolling out now on the web and in Instagram, as "a place for people to create, share and discover AIs to chat with – no tech skills required". Meta hasn't yet indicated if or when the feature will be launched outside of the US.
The free service lets you create customized AI chatbots that can tell jokes, create memes, and hand out advice. But the most intriguing use-case is for professional content creators, who can use the tool to "make an AI as an extension of themselves" to answer DMs and story replies, effectively creating an AI secretary for their social media admin.
You can access the AI Studio now in two ways, if you're in the US. You can head to the official Meta AI Studio website, where you can make a 'Creator AI' (which is an extension of you, if you have a professional Instagram account) or an 'AI Character' (a chatbot that's based on your chosen interests).
Alternatively, you can find the feature in Instagram by starting a new message and then tapping 'Create an AI chat'. From this point, Meta says you can customize the AI character's "name, personality, tone, avatar and tagline". Meta has created an in-depth guide to creating AI characters, which shows that there's already an impressive amount of customization.
For example, you can provide detailed instructions on how you want your AI characters to behave like "use vocabulary from the 1950s" or "a corny dad who uses lots of puns". You can also tell the AI chatbot how to talk (like "you are concise and never repeat yourself").
But the AI chatbots available to professional Instagram creators will also go well beyond canned responses. Meta states that "long-term memory" will let the chatbot remember previous conversations with whoever's interacting with the AI. Interestingly, a beta option called 'Search' will also let your AI twin "draw information from the internet to make its responses more robust" and also "share links to websites when relevant".
Do we really want AI clones?
Meta has been edging towards unleashing full-blown AI characters in its apps this year, with an image creation tool called 'Imagine Me' recently letting you create a digital avatar of yourself with uploaded photos.
But Meta's new AI Studio is on another level, and gives us an (arguably disturbing) glimpse of where AI chatbots could be headed. Rather than '15 minutes of fame', the 21st century equivalent of Andy Warhol's famous prediction might instead be that everyone will get a personalized AI clone.
Meta's 'Creator AI' chatbots are currently only available to professional Instagram accounts (either Business or Creator) and are being sold as a way to "reach your audience and save time".
It remains to be seen how fans will react to accounts that message them using an AI clone of the personality they're following. And there is something slightly creepy about Meta's promise to creators that these AI bots can help them engage with their audience by "mimicking your tone and expressions". Meta says that some subjects will be off-limits for its AI chatbots and that they'll be clearly marked in its apps.
But this could also be a major step towards the normalization of this kind of chatbot experience and Meta's 'AI characters' (which are open for everyone to try) are a little more fun and innocent. Meta says these are for "fun, utility or support" and that you can create chatbots that "uniquely express your personal interests and nerd out on topics that matter to you".
However you feel about Meta's AI Studio, a new AI era for social media has started.
