Meta has begun testing a functionality in the United States for Instagram content creators that allows them to have their own chatbots, with which they can interact through direct messages (DM).
These new custom assistants will be based on the AI Studio platform, which first reached businesses and has been extended to content creators to offer them the tools necessary to create their own AI software.
The company announced in September last year that it planned to implement generative AI (GenAI) on its platforms to introduce a touch of fun to users’ communication with AI agents, its own Meta AI assistant and the EMU sticker generator.
It was then that it unveiled AI Studio, designed so that developers could create their own chatbots and integrate them into the messaging applications it offers. This platform will now be the one that content creators must use to take advantage of a new feature that it is testing on Instagram.
This is what Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced on his Instagram channel, where he revealed that Meta is in the first phase of a test that allows interaction with chatbots developed by content creators themselves.
These assistants, which will be extended over the next few weeks, will be included in the direct messages section and will be “clearly labeled as AI,” as shared in a demonstration of this format.
When starting a conversation with a user compatible with this beta test, the platform will indicate that the messages are generated with this technology and that “some of them may be inaccurate or inappropriate.”
This feature is currently only available in the United States, for around 50 content creators. As is usual in these cases, it is unknown whether an official version of the feature will be made official and in which regions it would be available.
Regarding the objective of this type of tool, Zuckerberg commented in a recent interview that “it is necessary to create many different APIs to reflect the different interests of people,” as reported by media such as TechCrunch.
In this sense, he has indicated that “a large part of the focus” of Meta will be to allow each creator “and eventually also each small business on the platform to create an AI to help them interact with their community and their customers.”
The executive has acknowledged that he does not believe that Meta yet knows “what will be the most attractive and entertaining formula that will generate confidence for this”, so he hopes that, with these tests, users can experiment “and see what ends up working well”.