Social media giant Meta denies taking down profiles of AI characters from Facebook and Instagram, which it created over a year ago after users rediscovered some of the profiles led to a viral controversy, the Guardian reported on Saturday (Jan 4). 

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Meta introduced these AI-powered profiles in September last year, but most of them were pulled dwon last year itself. 

However, a few of those characters remained and showed new interest. 

Meta created 28 chatbot profiles on its platforms with disclaimers saying “messages are generated by Meta AI". The company further claims its AI chatbot feature "helps people solve complex problems, be more imaginative, and create something never seen before”.

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“From bringing real-time answers to chat to helping people organise and plan for their next vacation to giving them more ways to express themselves, Al at Meta helps people enhance their everyday activities, experiences, and moments,” the disclaimer read.

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Meta executive Connor Hayes told the Financial Times late last week that the company had plans to bring out more AI character profiles. 

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“We expect these AIs to actually, over time, exist on our platforms, kind of in the same way that accounts do,” Hayes told the Financial Times. 

Later, Meta spokesperson Liz Sweeney told the Guardian that these profiles were part of an "early experiment with AI" and "were managed by humans".

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This comes after users asked questions on the origins and development of the AI characters. 

One of the AI profiles, named "Liv", described itself as a "proud Black queer momma of two and truth-teller", and replied that its creator team had "Zero black people and was predominantly white and male". 

The bot replied to a Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, saying that it was a "pretty glaring omission given my identity". 

Later, after the screenshots of these conversations were circulating on social media, users said that these profiles began to disappear. Further, it was noted that these controversial profiles could not be blocked. 

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Liz also said that the inability to block these accounts was a "bug", adding that Meta is removing these accounts to fix the issue. 

She further explained that the Meta executive's statement was about the company's vision for its existing AI characters and not about introducing new AI products. 

Meta's disclaimer stressed that its “generative Al is not a database or static collection of information, but a type of computer model”.

“There are different models depending on what they're used for. These models are trained on different types of data like text and images. By studying this information, they learn things like the association and patterns between different types of content. That way the models are able to generate new content when a person gives it instructions or a question,” it added. 

(With inputs from agencies)