Meta is always looking for ways to give itself the edge in what has become a never-ending battle to be the top social media company on the planet. Its latest idea is to allow users to grant an AI model permission to continue posting to their account. The scary part is that posting would begin and continue long after you've passed away.
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According to Business Insider, Meta has been granted a patent that 'outlines how a large language model can "simulate" a person's social media activity.'
"The language model may be used for simulating the user when the user is absent from the social networking system, for example, when the user takes a long break or if the user is deceased," Business Insider shared's from Meta's patent.
However, at this moment in time, Meta is not expected to move forward with the plan.
"We have no plans to move forward with this example," a Meta spokesperson told Business Insider.
In an even scarier twist, the same patent could potentially allow an AI model to simulate video and/or audio calls with users. That's right, you could have conversations with an AI cosplaying as a lost relative or friend.
"It does affect not just legal issues, but a lot of very important social, ethical, and deeply philosophical issues as well," Edina Harbinja, a UK-based professor at the University of Birmingham's Law School, told Business Insider.
Meta Is Making Moves in the AI Industry
Meta is working tirelessly to position itself at the forefront of the ongoing AI revolution. According to the Financial Times, the company recently struck a multibillion-dollar deal for NVIDIA chips. Those chips have skyrocketed in cost over the past few years.
The deal has been struck despite Meta reportedly developing its own AI hardware.
"No one deploys AI at Meta's scale, integrating frontier research with industrial-scale infrastructure to power the world's largest personalization and recommendation systems for billions of users," Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said in a recent press release. "Through deep co-design across CPUs, GPUs, networking and software, we are bringing the full Nvidia platform to Meta's researchers and engineers as they build the foundation for the next AI frontier."
So, while Meta may not have any current intention of connecting you with simulated versions of lost loved ones, the current infrastructure is certainly being ramped up to a point where it could become easily sustainable.
