Instagram Introduces Custom AI Chatbots, Including Personalized Versions Based on You

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Meta announced today that it will offer people a tool called AI Studio to build virtual characters with custom personalities, traits, and interests—including based on their own personalities. If you’re a creator, you’ll also be able to have your digital doppelgänger interact with fans in the DMs.

“Every creator can build an AI version of themselves or an assistant that their community can interact with,” Zuckerberg said during a fireside chat with Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, the chipmaker at the center of today’s artificial intelligence boom thanks to its all-important GPU chips. Meta says AI Studio will start rolling out to Instagram Business account users today and will be made available to all Meta users in the US over the next few weeks. The tool will be accessible at ai.meta.com/ai-studio and through the Instagram app, but it also will be possible to access the chatbots through WhatsApp, Messenger, and the web.

Zuckerberg said that he expects users to create custom AI chatbots for entertainment or as personal support tools, for example role playing how to ask for a raise or navigate an argument with a friend. “You can basically role-play that and see how the conversation will go, and get feedback on it,” he said.

The company says AI Studio will let users limit who their chatbots interact with and prevent them from discussing certain topics. The AI Studio usage policy prohibits users from representing real persons other than themselves or historical persons, religious figures, mass murders, or “objects that could be considered hateful, explicit or illegal.”

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In a blog post, Meta highlighted several chatbots developed by celebrities, including “Eat Like You Live There!,” a chatbot for dining recommendations made by chef Marc Murphy, and “What Lens Bro,” a bot for photography created by photographer Angel Barclay. The post mentioned that several Instagram personalities—Chris Ashley, Violet Benson, Don Allen, and Kane Kallaway—had made chatbot versions of themselves.

Meta’s AI Studio handbook states that users can personalize a chatbot by providing a detailed description, along with a name and image, and then specifying how it should respond to specific inputs. Llama will utilize these instructions to devise its responses. Meta claims Instagram users can “customize their AI based on things like their Instagram content, topics to avoid, and links they want it to share.”

Over the past year, Meta has become an AI success story, thanks to its decision to offer robust AI models for free. Last week, the company released a powerful version of its large language model Llama, providing developers, researchers, and startups with free access to a model comparable to the powerful paid version behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The company notes that its new chatbots are all based on the latest version of Llama.

Despite these advancements, Meta has faced challenges in finding the right tone and niche for its AI offerings. Last September, the company launched a range of AI chatbots loosely based on real celebrities. These included a fantasy roleplay dungeon master bot modeled after Snoop Dogg, a wisecracking sports bot inspired by Tom Brady, and an everyday companion inspired by Kendall Jenner.

These bots failed to become big hits, however, and Meta has retired them. Jon Carvill, a spokesman for Meta, said the company had learned from the earlier experiments. “AI Studio is an evolution,” he said.

There is plenty of evidence that users may find fully customizable bots more compelling. A company called Character AI, founded by several ex-Google employees who helped make breakthroughs in AI, has attracted millions of users to its own custom chatbots.

Zuckerberg also touted other new open source AI advances from Meta at SIGGRAPH. The company has developed a new tool for identifying the contents of images and video called Segment Anything Model (SAM) 2. The previous version is widely used for image analysis. Meta says SAM 2 could be used to more efficiently analyze the contents of video, for instance.

Earlier in the day, in an on-stage interview with WIRED’s Lauren Goode, Huang, the NVIDIA CEO, said he would “absolutely” want a “Jensen AI” that knows everything he’s ever said, written, and done. “You’ll be able to prompt it, and hopefully something smart gets said,” he said. He could force stock analysts to pepper the bot—instead of him—with questions about the company. “That’s the first thing that has to go,” he said with a laugh.

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