From Business Insider, February 11:
- If you could set your Instagram page to keep posting after you die, would you?
- Meta was granted a patent that would use AI to train a bot to keep post-mortem accounts active.
- A Meta spokesperson said the company has "no plans to move forward" with the tech.
Does Meta want to make our social media accounts immortal?
The company was granted a patent in late December that outlines how a large language model can "simulate" a person's social media activity, such as responding to content posted by real people.
"The language model may be used for simulating the user when the user is absent from the social networking system, for example, when the user takes a long break or if the user is deceased," the patent says.
Andrew Bosworth, Meta's CTO, is listed as the primary author of the patent, which was first filed in 2023.
"We have no plans to move forward with this example," a spokesperson for Meta told Business Insider.
In the patent, Meta lays out why it thinks people might need this.
If you're no longer posting online — whether that's because you need a break from social media or … you … die — your followers' user experience will be affected. In short, they'll miss you.
"The impact on the users is much more severe and permanent if that user is deceased and can never return to the social networking platform," the document says.
To fill that void, Meta would essentially create a digital clone of your social media presence, training a model on "user-specific" data — including historical platform activity, such as comments, likes, or content — to understand how you would (or rather, did) behave.
That clone can then respond to other people's content by liking and commenting, or responding to DMs. For influencers or creators who make their livelihoods on Meta's platforms and need to take a break from social media, such a tool could be useful....
....MUCH MORE
If interested see also:
Coming To An Employer Near You: AI To Resurrect Departed Employees Using Their Work Product As Training Material
