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Facebook AI Social Networks

Mark Zuckerberg Says a Lot More AI Generated Content is Coming To Fill Up Facebook and Instagram Feeds 81

First we had friends. Then we had influencers. And if Mark Zuckerberg is correct, the next big thing in our social media feeds will be AI generated content. Lots of it. Fortune: Zuckerberg described our future feeds during Facebook-parent company Meta's third quarter earnings conference call on Wednesday, describing it as a natural evolution. "I think were going to add a whole new category of content which is AI generated or AI summarized content, or existing content pulled together by AI in some way," the Meta CEO said. "And I think that that's gonna be very exciting for Facebook and Instagram and maybe Threads, or other kinds of feed experiences over time."

Zuckerberg touted the company's Llama large language model and the success of products it powers, such as the Meta AI chatbot that is now used by more than 500 million users every month. But Llama will increasingly play a role across Meta's business, Zuckerberg said, including tools for business customers and advertisers. As AI tools become more widespread, AI content will proliferate within social media feeds. Such feeds are actively being worked on inside Meta, Zuckerberg noted. "It's something we're starting to test different things around." "I don't know if we know what's exactly going to work really well yet, but some things are really promising," he added. "I have high confidence that over the next several years, this will be one of the important trends and one of the important applications."
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Mark Zuckerberg Says a Lot More AI Generated Content is Coming To Fill Up Facebook and Instagram Feeds

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  • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @08:40PM (#64907907)

    It is not.

    • by narcc ( 412956 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @09:11PM (#64907933) Journal

      Indeed. Nobody wants this. Quite the opposite, in fact.

      While he's right that "AI content will proliferate within social media feeds" the goal should be to eliminate as much of it as possible, not create more!

      • by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @10:22PM (#64908027)

        Nobody wants this. Quite the opposite, in fact.

        Facebook is already a hellish, unusable shitscape overwhelmed by AI-generated garbage. Can't see how this will be any different.

        • Nobody wants this. Quite the opposite, in fact.

          Facebook is already a hellish, unusable shitscape overwhelmed by AI-generated garbage. Can't see how this will be any different.

          It is worse the same way that the only thing worse than a Trump rally, is an even longer Trump rally.

        • by shanen ( 462549 )

          Only joke that landed on this rich target?

      • s/will proliferate/has proliferated/
        Then I agree

      • Indeed. Nobody wants this. Quite the opposite, in fact.

        My gut instinctively agrees with you; however, a moment of thought gives me pause.

        Many people HATE Reality. They do not want to see it or be 'victimized' by it. Facts are incredibly inconvenient. AI feeds would provide such a world to those folks. AI is more than happy to agree to our own hallucinations.

    • by Kisai ( 213879 )

      Call me when you can AI Generate customers.

      Cause replacing the users with AI, means there will be a lot less users willing to contribute anything to the platform. See the current exodus from Twitter to Bluesky.

      People are leaving because they don't want "Twitter" to ingest their content and then try and feed it back to them like it was twitter original content.

      Facebook should be sticking their AI "content generator" machine in full 4WD Reverse, otherwise they will be chasing people off the platform in droves

      • Turning "social media" and search into a place populated with lifeless puppets. People didn't sign up for these things to deal with puppets.
      • by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @10:04PM (#64908015)

        Oh I don't think thats the only reason people are leaving twitter.

        Its conversion into an all-politics-all-the-time zone of angry americans (remember folks, americans made up about 20% of the site prior to the takeover) who interject political shit into *every* conversation regardless of whether they where participants or not has had a huge demoralizing effect on its user base.

        My ma used to use it to discuss genealogy and follow her tv soap stars. But she gave up after finding that almost every conversation would end up with hostile people invading conversations to yell at them for not being on the right team of american politics, and considering that as a non american she has absolutely no interest in any of that, yeah, she wanted out. She now seems to like threads, I guess cos most of the angry people get kicked off it.

        Regardless of political leaning, it should be abundantly clear why twitter is failing. Trying to inject the political leanings of a minority of very hostile americans, maybe 5-10% of the user base into the conversations of the other 90% isn't how you retain a broad commercially exploitable user base.

        Turning the surviving population into unwilling AI trainers is merely the last straw.

        • Oh it's a public square or something. Their right to post political propaganda trumps anyone else' desire to enjoy the platform for any other purpose.

        • by mjwx ( 966435 )

          Oh I don't think thats the only reason people are leaving twitter.

          Its conversion into an all-politics-all-the-time zone of angry americans (remember folks, americans made up about 20% of the site prior to the takeover) who interject political shit into *every* conversation regardless of whether they where participants or not has had a huge demoralizing effect on its user base.

          This, and everyone over here is pretty much convinced that it's Musk injecting the political content. It doesn't seem to matter that the former Twitter users I know here in the UK were never interested in politics in the UK, let alone in the US. They just used Twitter to follow celebs and footballists, all of a sudden getting inundated with Old Biden and Evil Kamala posts despite having little idea who both of those people are. It's gotten so bad that everyone I knew who used twitter is now an X-user (pun i

    • It is not.

      From a business perspective it sure as hell is.

      Icky the InfluencerBot, is likely gonna be an order of magnitude cheaper than paying human influencers. Every advancement in that tech will enable the business to start eliminating another level of costly human burden when it comes to marketing.

      OK, OK, so there are some downsides. Human Influencer/Professional Attention Whore will no longer be a valid career goal in the social media lottery. We don’t know yet how insufferable AIs narcissism will be try

      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        There is also another downside: Longer term your business becomes irrelevant. But Zuck The Fuck never was a good business person.

    • Well, I hope he enjoys his new shinier, brighter, more AI-filled Facebook.

      I can a race on for social media platforms to ensure all content is human-made. That's something I'd be interested in. We're gonna go back to blogs & trusted authors, aren't we?
    • It's already mostly useless... Groups are kinda useful for the school PTA or your HOA kinda stuff but the main feed is just garbage.
    • Oh sure, it is very positive. For Zuckerberg's wallet.

  • by haxor.dk ( 463614 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @08:51PM (#64907915)

    ...of AI-blended slop. Pre-chewed and semi-digested (by something else) bites of data tossed at you by the wagonloads.

    Do not want.

    • Re:A tsunami (Score:4, Insightful)

      by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Thursday October 31, 2024 @03:22AM (#64908263)

      Pre-chewed and semi-digested (by something else) bites of data tossed at you by the wagonloads.

      Do not want.

      Odd how you described many of the reasons that platform went to shit years ago.

      Influencers rating influencers reviewing influencers talking about an influencer selling an influencers product. All sponsored. With millions of fake reviews to boot.

      Pretty arrogant watching humans bitch already. AI isn’t even remotely capable of corrupting marketing that bad.

    • ...of AI-blended slop. Pre-chewed and semi-digested (by something else) bites of data tossed at you by the wagonloads.

      Do not want.

      You say that now. But what if I told you that the AI content will cause human influencers to start punching each other in the face IRL?

      • ...of AI-blended slop. Pre-chewed and semi-digested (by something else) bites of data tossed at you by the wagonloads.

        Do not want.

        You say that now. But what if I told you that the AI content will cause human influencers to start punching each other in the face IRL?

        I’d tell you to say that again. Loud enough for Dana White to hear you.

        PPV gold right there. Hell, they could fund their own college bailouts!

      • >But what if I told you that the AI content will cause human influencers to start punching each other in the face IRL?

        I might actually pay to watch that happen.

        • >But what if I told you that the AI content will cause human influencers to start punching each other in the face IRL?

          I might actually pay to watch that happen.

          You say that you might now.
          But what if I told you that it will be ad free?

  • It just occurred to me itâ(TM)s been four years since I deleted my FB account with well over one hundred âoefriendsâ. No regrets and this ick really makes me more than grateful that Iâ(TM)ve come to find it so easy to just burn down old accounts and never look back. Happily not engaged in holding my hostage holders hostage.
    • I haven't read FB for about 12 years. I don't feel like I've missed anything. You're doing great, you'll continue to be great. FB has no real world value.

      • What pisses me off is that it seems like there is a recent increase of organizations and companies using Facebook as a web publishing platform. I thought this trend was as dead as the dodo but it seems to be coming back. >:-(

        You need a Facebook account just to view these pages, like the first time this unfortunate trend was in swing.

        • The "Should I use Facebook and share your private life with people and strangers?" question is simpler.

          For familial matters, asking "Would my grandparents or great-grandparents, if they could, publish an about my family column in the local big city paper every day?" helps to sort the "User FB?" question out.

          Self-promotion as a daily act would be shunned by most people in prior generations. And yes, salespersons and some professions depend on self promotion....

        • I have an active FB account from back then. I only use it for things like that which have been very rare (for me). YMMV. But I do not seek them out on fb or follow them or post anything or communicate with anyone in FB in any way. I only end up on those FB company sites when a search shows that as their only net existence.

          I guess for low tech brick n mortar places it's easier and cheaper. Most of them barely post anything anyway.

  • by Mrs. Grundy ( 680212 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @09:13PM (#64907937) Homepage

    I know...former smokers are the least charitable critics of current smokers. But still, I feel real pity for anyone still sucking at Meta's sour teat. The algorithms are going to learn what tickles their limbic system and feed them that sour content like the proverbial rats hitting the heroin button. Please just leave the platform now — life is better without it.

    • I call this an experiment in psychological warfare.
    • by sg_oneill ( 159032 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @10:46PM (#64908047)

      The infernal thing about facebook is that a lot of peoples social lives kind of migrated onto that site. God knows a lot of mine did. I remember chatting with my girlfriend about this and realising neither of us coordinate social gatherings by phone anymore, its usually just on facebook chat. When we where in our 20s we'd phone peoples houses. Sometimes we'd even just go to friends houses and hope they where home. Nowdays that would be a really weird thing to do.

      As a result despite the regular conversations of "surely theres a better social media site than this?" nothing changes because for a migration to another site or off social media altogether to work, everyone has to do it together. And its compounded by the fact that even if all of my friends did it, THEIR friends would have to do it too, and then their friends friends would have to do it, and so on. Theres a massive network effect that makes it very hard to achieve.

      I'm kind of fascinated, and worried, by my governments (australia) push to ban minors from social media. Are we gonna see kids back to riding bicycles to each others houses and actually having vibrant lives again, or will it isolate kids and do terrible damage. Anyone who claims to know the answer to this is fucking lying. We dont know. It could be amazing. It could be a disaster.

  • by bruce_the_moose ( 621423 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @09:14PM (#64907941)

    Back in the day (and I'm old enuf to be allowed to say that) I joined Facebook to hook up again with friends from high school, friends from college, friends from former employers and enjoy pictures and stories about them and their new families and all of that. And then it changed. Fewer cute babies, more posturing and grandstanding and politics. That was 2016. And then it's just gotten worse. I look at it every now and again and it's ads and reels and links to things that'll try to hijack your browser. Seems like it's 20-1 enshittification vs family photos. AI will make it worse guaranteed. I might finally getting around to quitting it all together.

    • by Morpeth ( 577066 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @09:35PM (#64907977)

      I use https://www.fbpurity.com/ [fbpurity.com] it's the only thing for me that keeps FB usable, it does a good job of letting you filter out 95% of the crap.

    • AI has already made it worse. We're even run stories already about it here on Slashdot https://tech.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]

    • This is all happening because your friends just aren't that interesting.

      If you happen to be friends with 50 super prolific "influencers" who keep dropping videos of them by a different beach every day, then at least you have an active 'feed'. Lets assume you're super keen to see a different beach every day, and maybe like to ogle some of your friends bodies, then you can watch those videos every day too. You'd be the perfect FB user - you're "engaged" for hours each day, actively consuming content (any mayb

  • I'll admit it, I still use FB now and again, mainly just to see what some old friend are up to, but I use things like FBPurity and other tools that generally do a good job of blocking ads, stupid feeds, pretty much anything that's not a post from a friend.

    I hope these tools manage to block the upcoming tsunami of sh*t Suckerberg plans to unleash. If not, guess it will be the proverbial straw for me.

  • by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @09:23PM (#64907959)

    99% of FB and instagram is already just noise. Does it really matter if people write it or they sub it out to AI to post for them?

  • Shit in the pot, sow fear, uncertainty, and doubt over whether an article was written by a human. Could have something to do with the upcoming presidential election.
  • by Computershack ( 1143409 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @10:06PM (#64908019)
    All that will happen is people will leave and Facebook will be nothing more than AI talking to itself. Hopefully other social media platforms decide to do the same and the whole shitshow will see a long overdue demise.
    • This might indeed be the begining od the end for FB, its hayday has already passed but it is still going strong.

      As people will still likely want to communicate and keep up wieh relatives and friends, so it will be interesting to see what platform if any will be able to capture the niche FB used to have that focused on actual evens in fives instead of "content"

  • Sounds great (Score:5, Insightful)

    by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Wednesday October 30, 2024 @10:09PM (#64908021) Homepage Journal

    When can I expect AI to be trained to go on Facebook and Instagram to consume this AI-generated content? Certainly few humans can withstand the onslaught of so-called "content" for very long. We don't have the psychological stamina to keep pace with data centers filled with machines running continuously and consuming gigawatts.

    No matter how efficient evolution has made me, my 20 Watt brain can't out compute a kilowatt computer, let alone a gigawatt cluster. The human brain is pretty good at some things that computers struggle to do. But consuming advertisement is not one of them.

    • When can I expect AI to be trained to go on Facebook and Instagram to consume this AI-generated content?

      Have you seen the quality of Facebook posts? I can only summise that it already is trained on its own ai generated sewage.

      • When can I expect AI to be trained to go on Facebook and Instagram to consume this AI-generated content?

        Have you seen the quality of Facebook posts? I can only summise that it already is trained on its own ai generated sewage.

        Quality, isn’t something I’m expecting from a social platform. The humans who became fake plastic representations online for status and clout chasing, tend to worry about that more than others. Seriously. I’m sharing a memory with friends and family, not fucking selling it.

        Really tends to say a lot about what Facebook and Instagram have become. Nothing but a shitty mall full of crap to sell. What exactly does a focus on quality mean there? More “quality” crapware, or bet

        • Quality, isn’t something I’m expecting from a social platform.

          You are using the term "quality" incorrectly. Quality does not mean good. Quality means meeting expectations. A "quality" post on Facebook is literally anything one of my friends says since that is what I'm interested in and why I would use Facebook. Whether my friends are becoming fake facsimiles of themselves, or are talking shit is not the point. It's like saying a BBQ is crap because one of the guests you are talking to starts talking politics, that isn't the fault of the BBQ.

          My point is that my friend'

    • Here ya go...The Midas Plague by Fred Pohl: https://archive.org/details/ga... [archive.org]
  • In theory I can see the value of AI summaries of events, though if I'm on social media I think I'm more interested in the people. But right now facebook is a mess of pages posting AI generated pictures.

  • Absolute slop. Made sure to get all my family off it as well.

  • I'm not on FB - I know hard to believe.

    such as the Meta AI chatbot that is now used by more than 500 million users every month

    Serious question, what are they using it for ?

    Is this just shit that marketing is making up ?
    are those 500M simply reading AI generated ads ?
    is the AI summarizing news stories while adding in new conspiracy theories free of charge ?
    what the fuck is he talking about ?

    • You know, it's so annoying to have to go to a whole other app to search for questions you have right now when you're on FB.
      Like what is the current hip size of Kim K's ass?
      Those are really importing questions you would like to have answered right now because there are more interesting things on FB like Kylie J's posts.

  • I better be able to opt out of AI

    • by zlives ( 2009072 )

      the trope used to be "there are no girls on internet"
      soon there will be just bots on the internet. i for one can't wait for this seppuk move by the socials

  • People doubt the platform when they suspect something fake. So he guarantees all of it is. Great move. I want that site to die.
  • Everyone here is talking about how FB went to shit in 2016 with non-stop unpleasant political content invading every area of FB.

    That has not been my experience at all.
    None of the many interest group pages (about computing, railroads, history, nature pictures, alumni, and other more specialized topics) has been invaded.
    Oh, once in a while someone posts something political, but the admins nuke it immediately and the person is ejected. Not a big problem at all. The secret is having closed groups and/or heavy-h

  • It's been a good run, but this is the final straw.
    Just signed up at Vero.

    https://vero.co/ [vero.co]

  • He participates in opinion manipulation in 2020 elections, then pretends to be independent and 2024 election gets the same treatment, the pushes AI which is anti sanity. This guy is anti humanity, that's how you know evil.
    • He participates in opinion manipulation in 2020 elections, then pretends to be independent and 2024 election gets the same treatment, the pushes AI which is anti sanity. This guy is anti humanity, that's how you know evil.

      Sit and speak with a seasoned cop who’s worked a career inside one prison. In one city. In one country. You tend to find a person who has become naturally biased with regards to being “anti humanity” due to the side of humanity they have been exposed to repeatedly in that career. I’ve seen it, and it tends to make sense when you hear enough stories.

      Now imagine how fucked up that anti humanity bias can become when you’re the guy looking at 2 billion humans worth of humanity

  • considering the signal to noise ratio on the meta platform is already pretty dismal, what could possibly go wrong ?

  • All real people left, only artificial ad-bots remain.
    And they watch each other's ads.

  • I use FB mainly for some groups, and marketplace. None of my friends/family post anything, my feed is mostly ads

    Since a few months I'm seeing a lot of "sponsored" posts, a picture of an animal, that looks half real/half fake, and the post subject is always "Great Photography!" and it is a group about animal like (panda lovers" or whatever. They all look completely AI generated, by bots, I always block them.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Who is asking for this crap?

    No, seriously? Who is actually asking for this AI generated nonsense? I am certainly not. To date, most on Slashdot have voiced an opinion against this. Governments and legislators have also voiced their concerns.

    The only people who I have actively using this crap are scammers, and shysters.

  • AI is recycled data. Essentially they're saying they're going to randomize the existing content a bit and then re-post it. Nothing new added, just poorly-obscured filler.

  • The # of FB/Meta failures keeps on growing !
  • Well half the users on Facebook are bots, so I guess Bot content is to be expected.
  • I'll just have to install Winamp to overcome the Llama.
  • when facebook is just bots reacting to both writing about AI generated content. Who is going to pay for ads that are only seen by a dozen boomers and bots ?
  • Anyone got an estimate on the timeline until a high enough percentage of Facebook content is not human-generated, that you can declare humans on Facebook to be essentially 'extinct'?
    Not even kidding, really. That's where this all has been heading, and that's where I think it'll end up: humans being a tiny minority. I hope it kills off Facebook entirely.
  • AI content is based on scraping content so AI is going to feed upon itself and end up like a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy...

  • Jonathan Haidt [conversati...htyler.com] said something like social media reflect the psychology of the people who built the platforms, semi-autistic, analytical types, who are more about data and efficiency, and they don’t think as much about the human consequences.

    This was in a Youtube video of a talk Haidt had made. Curiously enough a transcript of the talk was posted to social media. Subsequently the transcript was taken down and the account suspended. As were all previous posts made from that account.
  • 10 years ago, social media was exciting. Social media let you see content from people you cared about. Then came "influencers" and now comes AI-generated junk. Multi-billion-dollar businesses now depend on history not repeating itself.

    In my great grandparents era, getting a letter in the mail was exciting. Then came bills and marketing junk mail.

    In the 1960/70s, CB radio was exciting; then it turned into a cesspool.

    40 years ago, getting a phone call was exciting. Then came free international calls and

To communicate is the beginning of understanding. -- AT&T

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