Instagram spotted developing a customizable AI friend

Unlike the “AI friend” chatbot that can chat about a variety of topics, these interactive AI personas are each designed for different interactions. For instance, the AI chatbot that is played by Kendall Jenner, called Billie, is designed to be an older sister figure that can give young users life advice. To further customize your AI friend, you can choose their interests, which will “inform its personality and the nature of its conversations,” according to the screenshots. The options include “DIY,” “animals,” “career,” “education,” “entertainment,” “music,” “nature” and more.

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• That said, the latter being popular is likely to be partly tied in with how new the AI is, attracting people who are curious and just want to mess around with the chatbot to see what they can get Bing to say.
• The remaining control group (10%) then had the selector rolled out to them across the course of yesterday, so everyone should have it by now.
• Those kind of users will doubtless get bored of toying with the AI before too long, giving a different picture of personality usage when the dust settles a bit more.

In December, Google’s management issued a “code red” amid the launch of ChatGPT, per The New York Times. The outlet reported that the conversational chatbot sparked concerns over the future of Google’s search engine. Launched on November 30, the chatbot has impressed — and riled — many different people. Chatter about the new tech has stretched far beyond the business world and even managed to provoke the disdain of award-winning songwriter Nick Cave. Another space in which students have successfully channelled the usefulness of generative AI is in streamlining their workflows. By using AI as a type of personal assistant, tools can quickly pull together information, prepare schedules and free up precious time.

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Instagram has been spotted developing an “AI friend” feature that users would be able to customize to their liking and then converse with, according to screenshots shared by app researcher Alessandro Paluzzi. Users would be able to chat with the AI to “answer questions, talk through any challenges, brainstorm ideas and much more,” according to screenshots of the feature. The remaining control group (10%) then had the selector rolled out to them across the course of yesterday, so everyone should have it by now. That’s good news for those who want more options when it comes to the chatbot’s responses to their queries. Microsoft’s Bing chatbot is now offering a choice of personalities for all users, with the rollout of the Bing Chat Mode selector having been completed. The hiring managers were largely impressed and both said they’d most likely follow up with a screening call for at least one of the letters.

Last month, Meta launched 28 AI chatbots that users can message across Instagram, Messenger and WhatsApp. Some of the chatbots are played by notable names like Kendall Jenner, Snoop Dogg, Tom Brady and Naomi Osaka. It’s worth noting that the launch of the AI personas wasn’t a surprise, given that Paluzzi revealed back in June that the social network was working on AI chatbots. Elda Bengu is a psychology student at Arizona State University in Tempe, an institution that has embraced AI tools through an AI Innovation Challenge in partnership with OpenAI. As part of that effort, Bengu’s lecturer Christiane Reves created a chatbot called Language Buddy that Bengu has used to practise speaking German.

While some teachers are more positive about the development, viewing the tech as a tool to save time or an extension of more mainstream AI programs such as Grammarly, others are not so keen. AI experts, search experts, and current and former Google employees told Insider’s Tom Dotan that ChatGPT was unlikely to be a replacement for Google search at present because of concerns about its inaccurate responses. From job-seekers, to rival tech companies, and academics, here are some of the people feeling the heat of ChatGPT. Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

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Research shows that engaging in conversation is among the quickest ways to improve language skills, but students aren’t always able to say things in the clearest way or ramp up the complexity of their speaking. Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more. He has written about tech for the best part of three decades, and writes books in his spare time (his debut novel – ‘I Know What You Did Last Supper’ – was published by Hachette UK in 2013). That said, the latter being popular is likely to be partly tied in with how new the AI is, attracting people who are curious and just want to mess around with the chatbot to see what they can get Bing to say. Those kind of users will doubtless get bored of toying with the AI before too long, giving a different picture of personality usage when the dust settles a bit more. As you can see, at the time of the tweet, 90% of Bing chatbot users had the tri-toggle chat selector that lets you switch between three different personalities for the AI (Precise, Balanced, or Creative).

• Especially as this setting is where you’re going to get the more interesting – or perhaps occasionally eccentric, or even outlandish – responses.
• They did say the letters lacked personality and suggested job-seekers use the chatbot as more of a jumping-off point.
• Darren is a freelancer writing news and features for TechRadar (and occasionally T3) across a broad range of computing topics including CPUs, GPUs, various other hardware, VPNs, antivirus and more.
• Research shows that engaging in conversation is among the quickest ways to improve language skills, but students aren’t always able to say things in the clearest way or ramp up the complexity of their speaking.
• While some teachers are more positive about the development, viewing the tech as a tool to save time or an extension of more mainstream AI programs such as Grammarly, others are not so keen.
• You would then be taken to a chat window, where you could click a button to start conversing with the AI.

Her experience highlights just one of the many imaginative ways in which students are using generative AI. Like Ivich, many students seem drawn to applications that showcase the ‘human’ side of programs such as ChatGPT and NotebookLM, an AI-powered interface from Google in Mountain View, California, for interpreting documents. Although early iterations of these tools required users to key in queries, newer versions allow people to speak into a microphone, enabling more-natural, organic conversations. It’s not clear which AI tools Instagram would use to power the “AI friend,” but as generative AI booms, the social network’s parent company Meta has already begun incorporating the technology into its family of apps.

Simply because this is where the AI has the most free rein, and so will seem more human-like – rather than ‘Precise’ mode which is more like a straight answer to a search query. (Arguably somewhat defeating the point of having an AI carrying out your searches, anyway). He called a ChatGPT song written in his style “a grotesque mockery of what it is to be human” and dismissed it as “bullshit” in his newsletter. I asked ChatGPT to write my cover letters and sent them to hiring managers to see what they thought. I fed the bot some real job descriptions and a few brief sentences about my made-up experience to generate the letters.

“I’m pleasantly surprised at some of their creative uses,” says Victor Lee, a learning-sciences researcher at Stanford University in California who focuses on the intersections between AI and education. By the time her comprehensive exams rolled around in August 2024, Adriana Ivich had done nearly everything she could to prepare herself. To officially become a PhD student in biomedical informatics at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus in Aurora, Ivich needed to present her proposed research project and then meet with her committee for a closed-door grilling. Earlier this week, we saw other work on the AI to reduce what are called ‘hallucinations’ (where the chatbot gives inaccurate info, or plain makes a mistake). There was also tinkering to ensure that instances where Bing simply fails to respond to a query happen less often.