Instagram created a fake, AI-generated Black woman — and the response was outraged.

Kill 'Em All

Meta was forced to euthanize its AI-generated "characters" after getting slammed for how cringe and problematic they were.

As 404 Media reports, Meta has now killed off most of its remaining AI user accounts — most of which were launched in 2023 and kiboshed by summer 2024 — in the wake of a backlash against one of its executives suggesting they may be the future of the company's social networks.

At the end of 2024, Connor Hayes, Meta's VP of product for generative AI, told the Financial Times that these AI-generated accounts would "have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI."

Immediately following that end-of-year admission, folks online unsurprisingly began clowning the notion of Facebook and Instagram-sponsored bot accounts.

"Translation: 'Our real users are quitting the platform, so we will fill our community with fake users instead,'" one Reddit user wrote.

"This is some deeply evil shit," a Bluesky user opined.

Liz Lemon

While criticism reached a fever pitch, users started tracking the fake profiles down — and what they found was somehow even worse, and stranger, than you'd imagine.

As Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah posted on Bluesky, one of the since-killed profiles was described as a "proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller." Named "Liz," the account existed primarily as a chatbot, and when Attiah asked it about the people who created it, she was met with a pretty jarring answer.

"My creators' team is predominantly white, cisgender, and male — a total of 12 people: 10 white men, 1 white woman, and 1 Asian male," the AI profile responded. "Zero black creators — pretty glaring omission given my identity!"

Along with the buzzword-heavy "Liz" account, Meta not only created accounts like "Carter," its dating coach chatbot, but also promoted user-generated AI accounts as well. As folks took to Bluesky and Reddit to dunk on these profiles, Meta started taking them down, 404 reported.

In a statement to 404, Meta spokesperson Liz Sweeney attempted to set the record straight about the company's AI profiles — but that "clarification" didn't provide much illumination.

"There is confusion: the recent Financial Times article was about our vision for AI characters existing on our platforms over time, not announcing any new product," the spokesperson said. "The accounts referenced are from a test we launched... in 2023."

"These were managed by humans," Sweeney continued, "and were part of an early experiment we did with AI characters."

We've reached out to Meta to ask exactly how many profiles were killed and what, if any, the company's plans for AI users will be moving forward. Given the aforementioned non-clarification, however, we're not expecting much.

More on Meta: Zuckerberg Seems Genuinely Alarmed by the Explosive Growth of Bluesky


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