Your Instagram app is about to get another healthy (or unhealthy, depending on how you look at it) dose of generative AI. Meta wants to let anyone create AI avatars that have the ability to chat with users. If the concept sounds familiar, it’s because we’re looking at Meta’s version of OpenAI’s custom GPTs. Also, we knew it was coming.
Any Instagram user can create custom AI bots with no coding required. You can customize the AI avatars to interact with fans on specific topics to help manage your large fanbase. You can also create custom Instagram AI chatbots that only talk to you about specific subjects.
While I can see the potential benefits of making your own custom chatbots, the fact that Meta is bringing them to Instagram is a little worrying.
There are countless concerns about user privacy in the early age of AI, with companies gobbling up all the data they can. Add to that Meta’s history of shady privacy practices, and you’ll understand my worries. After all, not even Apple wanted to add Meta AI to Apple Intelligence because of privacy concerns.
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If none of that worries you, then Instagram AI Studio might be exactly what you need to grow your online business or have more custom chatbots to talk to.
Meta explained in a blog post that AI Studio is available on the web or via the Instagram mobile app. Based on Llama 3.1, AI Studio lets you build Instagram avatars without requiring any coding skills.
You’ll just use text prompts to tell the AI what you need from the custom chatbot you’re about to make:
You can use a wide variety of prompt templates or start from scratch to make an AI that teaches you how to cook, helps you with your Instagram captions, generates memes to make your friends laugh – the possibilities are endless.
The app lets you customize the Instagram chatbot’s name, personality, tone, avatar, and tagline.
Once you make one, you can share the AI avatar with friends via Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp. Or you can use it for your own needs.
If you decide to make your Instagram AI avatar public, you can set up rules for the kind of chats it can conduct with your followers. It’s up to you to police that chatbot, not Meta, however:
Creators can customize their AI based on things like their Instagram content, topics to avoid and links they want it to share. Through the professional dashboard in the Instagram app, creators can turn auto-replies on and off, and even decide who their AI replies to. Responses from creator AIs are clearly labeled, so there’s full transparency for fans.
Fans will always know they’re talking to an Instagram AI avatar rather than their favorite influencers and stars. The stars icon next to an Instagram profile will tell you the account is already using AI chatbots.
Meta makes no mention of the privacy of the chats you’ll have with AI, but says it has policies in place to govern AI Studio. The word “privacy” appears a total of zero times in Meta’s 18-page document designed to walk you through AI Studio.
If you’re interested in Instagram AI avatars, be sure to check the official announcement at this link, which also contains a few examples of AI Studio chatbots.