(Web Desk) - Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed on Thursday that Meta will soon introduce AI-generated characters created by users through Meta AI Studio on Instagram. This initiative will kick off with trials in the United States.
The announcement coincided with Character.AI, a chatbot company backed by a16z, launching a feature allowing users to interact with AI avatars via calls.
Zuckerberg emphasized that these AI chatbots will be clearly labelled as such to ensure transparency for users.
“Rolling out an early test in the U.S. of our AI studio so you might start seeing AIs from your favourite creators and interest-based AIs in the coming weeks on Instagram. These will primarily show up in messaging for now, and will be clearly labelled as AI,” he said.
“It’s early days and the first beta version of these AIs, so we’ll keep working on improving them and make them available to more people soon,” Zuckerberg added.
He highlighted collaborations with creators such as meme account Wasted and tech innovator Don Allen Stevenson III, who have already tested early versions of creator-designed chatbots.
“There needs to be a lot of different APIs that get created to reflect people’s different interests. So a big part of the approach is going to be enabling every creator, and then eventually also every small business on the platform, to create an AI for themselves to help them interact with their community, and their customers if they’re a business,” he added.
Creators may utilize these AI tools to engage with their followers, particularly when they cannot personally respond to all messages.
Acknowledging the experimental nature of the endeavor, Zuckerberg described the development of AI avatars as an evolving "art form," predicting that their effectiveness will improve over time as user feedback is incorporated.
“I don’t think we know going into this, what is going to be the most engaging and entertaining and trust-building formula for this,” Zuckerberg noted.
“So we want to give people tools so that you can experiment with this and see what ends up working well,” he said. Meta plans to initially pilot the feature with approximately 50 creators and a limited number of users, gradually expanding access over the coming months.
The company aims to achieve full deployment by August, following its introduction of AI studio capabilities at last year's developer conference, aimed initially at enabling businesses to build customized chatbots.