Your Digital Twin Is Here – Meta’s New AI Studio Lets You Create AI Versions of Yourself for Instagram
If you’ve ever fantasized about having an AI clone of yourself that could answer questions and offer advice on your behalf, Meta’s new AI Studio promises to help you do just that – if you live in the US.
Meta describes his AI Studiowhich is now rolling out on the web and Instagram, as “a place for people to create, share, and discover AIs to chat with — no technical skills required.” Meta has not yet indicated if or when the feature will launch outside the US.
The free service lets you create custom AI chatbots that can tell jokes, make memes, and offer advice. But the most intriguing use case is for professional content creators, who can use the tool to “create an AI as an extension of themselves” to answer DMs and story comments, effectively creating an AI secretary for their social media manager.
There are now two ways to access AI Studio if you are in the US. You can go to the official Meta AI Studio websitewhere you can create a ‘Creator AI’ (an extension of yourself, if you have a professional Instagram account) or an ‘AI Character’ (a chatbot based on your chosen interests).
Alternatively, you can find the feature in Instagram by starting a new post and then tapping ‘Create an AI chat’. From there, Meta says, you can customize the AI character’s “name, personality, tone, avatar, and tagline.” Meta has a comprehensive guide to creating AI characters, showing that there is already an impressive amount of customization options.
For example, you can give detailed instructions on how you want your AI characters to behave, such as “use 1950s vocabulary” or “have a cheesy dad who uses lots of puns.” You can also tell the AI chatbot how to speak (such as “be concise and never repeat yourself”).
But the AI chatbots available to professional Instagram creators also go far beyond canned responses. Meta claims that “long-term memory” lets the chatbot remember previous conversations with whoever it’s interacting with. Interestingly, a beta option called “Search” also lets your AI twin “pull information from the web to make its responses more robust” and also “share links to websites when relevant.”
Do we really want AI clones?
Meta has started using full-fledged AI characters in its apps this year. It recently launched an image creation tool called Imagine Me, which lets you create a digital avatar of yourself using uploaded photos.
But Meta’s new AI Studio is on another level, and gives us an (arguably disturbing) glimpse into where AI chatbots might be headed. Instead of “15 minutes of fame,” the 21st century equivalent of Andy Warhol’s famous prediction might be that everyone gets a personalized AI clone.
Meta’s ‘Creator AI’ chatbots are currently only available to professional Instagram accounts (both businesses and creators) and are marketed as a way to “reach your audience and save time.”
It remains to be seen how fans will react to accounts that message them using an AI clone of the personality they follow. And there’s something eerie about Meta’s promise to creators that these AI bots can help them connect with their audiences by “mimicking your tone and expressions.” Meta says that some topics will be off-limits for its AI chatbots and that they will be clearly marked in its apps.
But this could also be a big step towards the normalisation of these kinds of chatbot experiences, and Meta’s ‘AI characters’ (which anyone can try out) are a little more fun and innocent. Meta says these are meant for “fun, utility or support” and that you can create chatbots that “uniquely express your personal interests and geek out about topics that matter to you”.
Whatever you think of Meta’s AI Studio, a new era of AI has dawned for social media.