Meta devised an AI that simulates the activity of users on Instagram and Facebook after death

Meta It was proposed to use a AI model to simulate a user’s activity on social networks, sharing posts and interacting as said person would, after a long break on the platforms or even after having died although it will not implement this technology.

Social networks have their own policies on what to do when an account owner dies. In the case of platforms such as Instagram or Facebook, they allow these profiles to be kept for the family and friends of the user in question, in a format of commemorative accounts.

These accounts they lock the profile to protect privacy of the deceased person, however, is not deleted so that their social media memories can be preserved. Likewise, you can select “legacy contacts”, that is, profiles of other users, to be able to continue managing your profile.

However, Meta has been considering a completely different view for user accounts that “take a long break” or have diedusing a AI model capable of simulating user activity on the social network.

Specifically, the language model was designed to “simulate the user when he or she is absent from the social networking system” and its patent was approved at the end of December last year, although it was recorded for the first time in 2023 under the authorship of the Meta’s chief technology officer, Andrew Bosworth.

In this sense, the language model in question could share new posts and interact on the social network through ‘likes’ and responding to content shared by real people, with the deceased user’s account, imitating their behavior as if they were still using it.

This is because, according to the patent document and as Business Insider has reported, the impact on following users “is much more severe and permanent” if when the user has died he does not interact again on the social network.

Therefore, the AI ​​model was designed to try to fill the gap left by the user’s profile on social networks and, to imitate their behavior, it was proposed with a training based on user-specific data. That is, it would look at their activity on the social network, their comments or the ‘likes’ of certain content, to understand how said person would act.

However, a Meta spokesperson has clarified in statements to the aforementioned media that, for the moment, they have no plans to “continue with this example.” Likewise, he explained that, although they file patents to disseminate concepts, a approved patent does not have to be related to the company going to carry out that concept or implement said technology.

With all this, although Meta does not plan to implement this option on Instagram or Facebook, it must be taken into account that its CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, already discussed this issue in an interview with podcaster Lex Fridman in 2023, when he detailed that if a loved one has been lost “there may be ways in which you can interact or relive certain memories.”