Instagram is apparently testing an AI chatbot that lets you choose from 30 personalities


Meta could be the latest company to test the social potential of AI chatbots.
A screenshot shared by leaker Alessandro Paluzzi on Twitter shows what seems to be an intro screen for the new Instagram feature. It says the chatbots will be able to answer questions, give advice, and help users write messages. It also says that users will be able to choose between “30 AI personalities and find which one you like best.”
Meta hasn’t announced any formal plans for such a feature, but chatbots would fit past statements about the company’s AI ambitions. In February, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Meta was “developing AI personas that can help people in a variety of ways” and that the company was exploring how to make such bots accessible through text conversations “like chat in WhatsApp and Messenger.”
Other companies have also seen the potential of chatbots as an engaging social feature. Snapchat launched its own “My AI” chatbot (powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT) in February. And sites like Character.ai have achieved significant popularity by allowing users to train and talk to chatbots based on popular fictional characters. Even bots not intended for social engagement have been adopted for this purpose. When Microsoft launched its Bing chatbot earlier this year, many users were surprised, disturbed, and delighted in equal measure by the bot’s strange conversational patter.
The difficulty for companies, though, is creating a bot that’s engaging and fun to talk to but doesn’t cross the line into offensive or dangerous interactions. For example, not long after Snap released its “My AI” bot, it began offering disturbing advice to users, including encouraging an individual pretending to be 13-years-old to have sex with their 31-year-old “boyfriend.” In March, a Belgian man died by suicide, with his widow claiming that he had been encouraged to kill himself by a chatbot he’d been talking to regularly.
It’s not clear if Meta genuinely intends to launch such bots on Instagram, or what safety steps it may take. We reached out to the company for comment and they declined. The leaker of the above screenshot, Paluzzi, has a reliable track record for spotting upcoming app features, including a BeReal Instagram clone and a co-author feature on Twitter.
Update Wednesday, June 7th, 05:49AM ET: Updated with response from Meta.
Meta could be the latest company to test the social potential of AI chatbots. A screenshot shared by leaker Alessandro Paluzzi on Twitter shows what seems to be an intro screen for the new Instagram feature. It says the chatbots will be able to answer questions, give advice, and help…
Recent Posts
- I installed iOS 18.4 dev beta and the big Siri intelligence update is nowhere to be found
- Apple’s News app is getting a recipes section
- Amazon just overtook Walmart in revenue for the first time
- South of Midnight’s Southern Gothic folklore world is rooted in authenticity
- What to expect at Mobile World Congress 2025: Nothing, Samsung, Xiaomi and more
Archives
- February 2025
- January 2025
- December 2024
- November 2024
- October 2024
- September 2024
- August 2024
- July 2024
- June 2024
- May 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- September 2018
- October 2017
- December 2011
- August 2010