Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp parent Meta are working on artificial intelligence chatbots to appeal to younger users to keep up engagement, reportedly planning to unveil them at the Meta Connect conference this week.
The Gen AI, as they are called internally, are chatbots being tested before this week's conference that has personalities to appeal to younger users, sources told The Wall Street Journal in a report published Sunday morning.
The push for younger users is not new amid the surging popularity of Instagram rival TikTok, prompting Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg in October 2021 to focus "teams to make serving young adults their north star rather than optimizing for the larger number of older people," the Journal reported.
"Bob the Robot" is hailed as a "sassmaster general" with "superior intellect, sharp wit, and biting sarcasm," mimicking the "Futurama" cartoon character Bender as "a sassy robot" that "taps into the type of farcical humor that is resonating with young people," documents viewed by the Journal noted.
Facebook was founded almost 20 years ago, making it older than some of the young users it hopes to lure to compete with TikTok or Snapchat for engagement.
"To make a language model usable, you need to give it a personality," Princeton University researcher Ameet Deshpande told the Journal, citing his study of AI chatbots. "But it comes with its own side effects."
Another chatbot is called "Alvin the Alien."
"Human, please! Your species holds fascination for me," Alvin wrote, according to the Journal. "Share your experiences, thoughts, and emotions! I hunger for understanding."
AI chatbots are more appealing to younger users, according to former Snap and Instagram executive Meghana Dhar.
"Definitely the younger you go, the higher the comfort level is with these bots," Dhar told the Journal.
"Meta's entire strategy for new products is often built around increased user engagement. They just want to keep their users on the platform longer because that provides them with increased opportunity to serve them ads."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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