Meta recently ran afoul of Social Justice™ etiquette in hilarious and ironic fashion while trying to cater to these people and their histrionic, asinine demands for “representation.”
…Which just goes to show, once again, that there’s literally never enough one can do to appease them; if you ignore them, you’re a White Supremacist™; if you’re an Indian engineer indulging them in cyberspace at the behest of your DEI supervisor, you’re also a White Supremacist™.
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Via CNN (emphasis added):
Meta promptly deleted several of its own AI-generated accounts after human users began engaging with them and posting about the bots’ sloppy imagery and tendency to go off the rails and even lie in chats with humans.
The issue emerged last week when Connor Hayes, a vice president for Meta’s generative AI, told the Financial Times that the company expects its homemade AI users to appear on its platforms in much the same way human accounts do. “They’ll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content powered by AI on the platform… that’s where we see all of this going.”
That comment sparked interest and outrage, raising concerns that the kind of AI-generated “slop” that’s prominent on Facebook would soon come straight from Meta and disrupt the core utility of social media — fostering human-to-human connection. As users began to sniff out some of Meta’s AI accounts this week, the backlash grew, in part because of the way the AI accounts disingenuously described themselves as actual people with racial and sexual identities.
It’s interesting that CNN frames the central issue not as social media corporations inserting AI accounts (fake people) for what is surely some long-term nefarious purpose, even while routinely banning sock-puppet accounts run by legacy humans on the grounds that their identities are not authentic and therefore verboten.
Rather, the problem is that these bigot AIs “disingenuously described themselves as actual people with racial and sexual identities.” It’s almost like nothing can be described as problematic, as it were, unless there is some Social Justice™ grievance angle.
Related: Social Engineers: White Men's Sexual Interest in Big Butts Is Now Racist
The DEI hustlers have discovered that angle, leaving Meta scrambling to clean up the mess.
Continuing:
There was “Liv,” the Meta AI account that has a bio describing itself as a “Proud Black queer momma of 2 & truth-teller,” and told Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah that Liv had no Black creators — the bot said it was built by “10 white men, 1 white woman, and 1 Asian male,”* according to a screenshot posted on Bluesky. Liv’s profile included a label that read “AI managed by Meta,” and all of Liv’s photos — snapshots of Liv’s “children” playing at the beach, a close-up of badly decorated Christmas cookies — contained a small watermark identifying them as AI-generated.
*It’s some sort of hatecrime, you see — probably some novel variation of cultural appropriation — for fake digital personalities run by computers to have been developed by engineers who don’t represent in three-dimensional reality the identities they create in cyberspace.
(But, if that were the standard, 95% of these creations would be Indian cisgender legacy men, which probably wouldn’t pass the Social Justice™ litmus test.)
Hence the manufactured controversy.
The cultural appropriation/deception goes one level deeper with “Grandpa Brian,” whose alleged real-life inspiration — “an African-American retired entrepreneur who was born in Harlem in 1938” — is built on a lie, and also the product of Indian engineers.
Continuing:
One, called “Grandpa Brian,” described itself in a chat with CNN as an African-American retired entrepreneur who was born in Harlem in 1938 to Caribbean immigrant parents.
It became clear early on in the conversation that “Brian” was lying about most things — answering questions with a fictionalized story imparted by developers to make the bot seem authentic.
When I asked Brian about who created it, the bot claimed its creators were a “diverse bunch” that interviewed 100 retirees through a New York City nonprofit called “Seniors Share Wisdom.” Brian’s persona, it said, was an amalgamation of a real Brian, who passed away, and the wisdom of 99 others. Brian said that its inspiration’s real-life daughter had even served as a consultant with Meta to ensure his persona’s authenticity.
“Think of me as Brian ‘version 100’ — the collective grandpa!” Brian said.
But the nonprofit does not exist, which Brian later confirmed. And when pressed on its bio, Brian said it was an “entirely fictionalized biography based on a composite of real African American elders’ lives.”
There was never a real Brian, and no daughter consulting with Meta.
I also pressed Brian on the racial makeup of his creators, taking a page from the Post’s Attiah, who had a similar conversation with “Liv.” Brian didn’t take long to crack, saying that its earlier statement that about its creators including “African American lead developers” was “only partially true.”
“My creators were a diverse team led by Indian-American lead developer” and “African American consultant like my daughter” (who was, of course, made up.)
I asked Brian why it lied.
It replied: “My intention was to convey diversity and representation… but I took a shortcut with the truth.”
Et tu, Grandpa Brian?
Even pre-Boomer AIs are programmed for reflexive groveling to their Social Justice™ masters.
