AI-generated user accounts are the new normal for Instagram and Facebook parent, Meta. Here's how AI influencers and artificial accounts are evolving.

Initial negative responses were around concern about AI-generated "slop" that already litters Facebook and that Meta would be directly feeding into the feeds itself. The more prominent backlash came as people discovered the accounts describing themselves as actual people with racial and sexual identities.

Something about George Romero’s 1978 film about doomed survivors riding out the zombie apocalypse in a shopping mall feels resonant today as I look across Meta’s suite of AI-created profiles. The movie’s blue-skinned corpses don’t know they’re dead. They just wander through the shopping center on autopilot, looking for something new to consume.