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Have you ever wished you could clone yourself and delegate your job’s most repetitive tasks to that clone? Beginning this week, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp users in the United States can create “AI characters” that mimic their own personalities and interests. While Meta says anyone can create an AI character aimed at making people laugh and generating memes, most of the characters’ appeal lies in their ability to interact with users’ fans on their behalf.
Users can find the new feature in AI Studio, a tool Meta introduced Monday specifically for its digital clones. AI Studio is also accessible via Instagram’s message feature, where users can tap the new “Create an AI chat” option. From there, users have two character options: regular AI characters, which are designed mainly for fun, and “creator AI,” which are meant to serve as extensions of business owners, content creators, and celebrities.
On the regular character end, users can generate what are essentially personalized chatbots. Based on Meta’s examples, these seem to be entertainment- or education-oriented: A chef character helps users learn how to cook, while a soccer trivia character delivers, well, soccer trivia. Characters appear to be capable of inline image generation, so if a user requests a picture of a mid-century modern living room, Meta’s open source Llama 3.1 model can whip one up on the spot.
Credit: Meta
Meta’s creator AI options, on the other hand, seem to be a lot more practical. Rather than ignoring the thousands of direct messages that land in their inboxes on a regular basis, businesses, influencers, and celebrities can build AI characters that match their own personalities, knowledge, and linguistic style, then use those characters to respond to followers on their behalf.
For businesses, this could mean answering customer questions or directing frazzled customers to the right helpdesk; for internet personalities, using AI to respond to story replies or DMs could offer a new way to interact with doting fans. (Meta discloses when users are chatting with an AI character to avoid confusion.)
Meta is just one brand offering content creators an AI-powered path toward expanding their online presence. Captions, a generative AI platform for video, announced Tuesday a new tool called “AI Twin” that allows users to create their own photorealistic digital copies. Users can then use text inputs to create videos using their personalized avatar—no actual camera required. Unlike Captions-designed avatars, these personalized avatars are accessible only to the user who made them, helping to dispel worries about AI-generated misinformation or targeted deepfakes.
Synthesia, a synthetic media generation company, also offers an AI doppelganger product, while Dawn AI allows users to create AI copies of themselves with artistic flair.