It’s 10 p.m., and I’m in bed on my phone, listening to an audio clip of a woman asking an AI chatbot for medical advice about her sick pet turtle. As someone who loves to lurk in other people’s business, I’m in heaven. But how did we get here? Let’s back up.
This week, Meta launched the Meta AI app. The app has two functions: The first is that it replaces “Meta View,” which was the app that went with Meta Ray-Ban glasses.
The second (which doesn’t require the glasses) is to be a stand-alone Meta AI assistant that you may have already encountered in Instagram and Facebook search. Basically, it’s a chatbot app that (I guess?) is meant to compete with ChatGPT.
This part of the app is pretty familiar. Meta AI can answer questions, chat with you, and make funny pictures for you, like this one I had made of a dog reading BI:
Here’s where it gets weird.
There’s also a public feed of other people’s AI chats that you can scroll through. Most of this feed is people making silly images — Darth Vader eating ice cream, that sort of thing. Some of these came from suggested prompts when you first open the app.
To be clear, your AI chats are not public by default — you have to choose to share them individually by tapping a share button.
But even so, I get the sense that some people don’t really understand what they’re sharing, or what’s going on.
Like the woman with the sick pet turtle. Or another person who was asking for advice about what possible legal measures he could take against his former employer after getting laid off. Or a woman asking about the effects of folic acid for a woman in her 60s who has already gone through menopause. Or someone asking for help with their Blue Cross health insurance bill.
I found all those examples mixed in with funny cartoon images in my public feed. Perhaps these people knew they were sharing on a public feed and wanted to do so. Perhaps not.
This leaves us with an obvious question: What’s the point of this, anyway? Even if you put aside the potential accidental oversharing, what’s the point of seeing a feed of people’s AI prompts at all?
Meta’s blog post announcing the AI app talked about the social aspect: “And just like all our platforms, we built Meta AI to connect you with the people and things you care about. The Meta AI app includes a Discover feed, a place to share and explore how others are using AI. You can see the best prompts people are sharing, or remix them to make them your own.” (I asked Meta for comment.)
Is seeing other people’s AI chats even interesting at all? Would it be interesting to see the AI chats of people I know? Yes, for snooping reasons. Is it interesting to see them for randos? Eh.
I barely want to see real photos of people I don’t know unless they’re incredibly hot; I am bored pretty quickly by seeing AI slop from a stranger.
Is a social AI feed the social feed of the future? Even trying to be as open-minded as possible about this, I am straining to see the appeal. I just don’t get it.
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