Instagram is apparently testing an AI chatbot that lets you choose from 30 personas

Meta may be the latest company to test the social potential of AI chatbots.

a screenshot Shared by leaker Alessandro Paluzzi Twitter shows what appears to be an intro screen for the new Instagram feature. It added that the chatbots would be able to answer questions, give advice and help users compose messages. It also says that users will be able to “choose between 30 AI personalities and choose which one you like best.”

Meta hasn’t announced any formal plans for such a feature, but the chatbots would fit past statements about the company’s AI ambitions. In February, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Meta was developing “AI personas that can help people in a variety of ways” and that the company would like to make such bots accessible via text conversations “like chats in WhatsApp and Messenger”. Was looking to make.

Other companies have also seen the potential of chatbots as an attractive social feature. Snapchat launched its “My AI” chatbot (powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT) in February. And sites like Character.ai have gained significant popularity by allowing users to train and talk to chatbots based on popular fictional characters. Even bots have been adopted for this purpose which are not intended for social engagement. When Microsoft launched its Bing chatbot earlier this year, many users were surprised, annoyed, and delighted in equal measure by the bot’s awkward conversational patter.

The difficulty for companies, however, is creating a bot that is engaging and fun to talk to but doesn’t cross the line into aggressive or dangerous conversations. For example, shortly after Snap released its “My AI” bot, it began offering annoying advice to users, including encouraging a man pretending to be 13 to have sex with his 31-year-old “boyfriend”. In March, a Belgian man died by suicide after his widow claimed he had encouraged to kill himself He was regularly talking through the chatbot.

It’s unclear whether Meta actually intends to launch such bots on Instagram, or what security steps it might take. We contacted the company for comment and they declined. Palazzi, the leaker in the screenshot above, has a reliable track record for spotting upcoming app features, including a BeReal Instagram clone and a co-author feature on Twitter.

Update Wednesday, June 7th, 05:49AM ET: Updated with response from meta.