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Back in December, a Meta executive catalyzed a doozy of a kerfuffle by saying the company expected AI-generated profiles to exist on its platforms kind of in the same way that accounts do.
Theyll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform. . . . Thats where we see all of this going, VP of generative AI Connor Hayes told the Financial Times. The reaction was . . . not great (Futurisms headline: People Are Disgusted by Facebooks Plan to Deploy AI-Powered Users).
Hayes specified that Meta expected this development to happen over time, and though it didnt sound the least bit appealing to me, I also thought it wasnt an immediate threat. But in recent days, a bevy of AI-generated people have overwhelmed my Facebook feed. They are, Im sure, a cruder manifestation of the idea than the AI members Hayes was talking up. But their presence has left me even warier of Meta willfully reimagining a social network around synthetic personalities.
The posts in question come from a variety of AI slop Facebook pages I didnt ask to follow. The page names, such as Nature and Animals, The Newstoday, and Dogs World, have little or nothing to do with the topics of the posts. And those topics are, well, bizarre.
How bizarre? Something like half the posts Ive seen involve AI-generated images of senior citizensas old as 120showing off birthday cakes theyve baked themselves. Most of the others relate to talented craftspeople who have fashioned elaborate sculptures out of materials as diverse as wood, ice, and vegetables. A smattering are then-and-now shots of happy people in photos taken decades ago and in 2025. A few show distressed wild animals getting rescued by humans.
Much of the imagery is obviously synthetic; some of it is a tad more subtle. But all of it is meant to tug at the heartstrings, often in nakedly manipulative ways. A pretty high percentage of the cake bakers and craftspeople explain that their accomplishment has gone unacknowledged. Sometimes they look downright morose about the lack of love. Thats presumably meant to get Facebook members clicking, which they dosometimes to the tune of thousands of comments and tens of thousands of likes.
Along with inserting these posts into the feeds of users who didnt request them (like, for instance, me), Meta tries to goose engagement via its Meta AI bot. An image of a bearded gent who carved a crib for his grandchildonly to discover that Nobody Likes It :(is accompanied by suggested questions such as Why is it unliked? and Babys reaction to crib. None of the answers the AI generates are of even the slightest value, creating a perverse feedback loop in which Meta is feeding one form of bad AI into another to generate even more slop.
Which is not to say that I didnt find this material briefly transfixing when it first found its way into my feed. Craving more understanding of what was going on, I clicked on some of the posts to read the comments. An alarming percentage of them showered the purported posters with birthday wishes, compliments on their artistic creations, and general good vibes. Either the Facebook members who left the comments had been fooled orworsethey were happy to be happy about the accomplishments of AI-generated characters going through slight variations on a handful of maudlin scenarios.
I did savor the delightfully cynical comments from those members who saw through the whole thing. So what? snapped one member in response to a post involving one particular cake-baking centenarian. Im 199 years old and I made my cake with peach cream and filling and I started decorating cakes when I was 6 months old.
After a few days of this, I got worried that engaging with these posts at all had something to do with them being thereespecially when the onslaught not only continued, but intensified. Maybe Facebook took me as liking them (though I never, you know, clicked the Like button) rather than merely being a victim of my own morbid curiosity. So I started using the Not Interested option to tell its algorithm I didnt want to see these kinds of items. A day later, they seem to be gone, though Im not ready to declare them eradicated.
At its bestas when group moderators take their jobs seriouslyFacebook is still wonderful. It might even live up to Mark Zuckerbergs platitudes about its mission being to connect the world. These AI posts have nothing to do with that. Stripped of its humanity and stuffed with generative AI, Facebook is the junkiest digital junk food imaginable.
And the worst part is that the bad contaminates the good. As AI-generated fake then-and-now photo comparisons began showing up, I started skimming right past similar ones posted by people Im following. Only after slowing down and assessing them more carefully did I realize they were their real family members, not more empty calories. I felt like Id been left to moderate my own feedwhich, come to think of it, is an official Facebook policy these days.
Maybe Meta will somehow institutionalize AI profiles in a way that adds value and leaves no member confused. But I cant help but wonder: Instead of welcoming AI-generated members onto its platforms, might the company be better off doing everything in its power to guarantee that the only people youll run across are, indeed, actual people?
Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if youre reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. Im also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads.
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