Look, I know I've gone on about this a few times now, but the gap between how impressive Meta is purportedly being with its latest AI tools and how impressively useful they are to the actual users of apps seems to be fairly significant.
Why? Who would want to do this? This was a great opportunity to be a part of an actual human experience and share your pictures of that with your network, to show what you really saw.

But for whatever reason, Meta is just "fake it, post AI fakes of it, it's all the same."

But it's not, it's not all the same.

The founding philosophy of social media is that it allows people the chance to express their individual vision to the world, gives voice to the voiceless, and a way for people in remote communities to connect. Ideologically, this should result in greater understanding through shared experience. That's not how it's gone so far, but ideally, that's the alluring concept of the medium, and the value that it provides to each individual.

Bots, and bot-sourced junk, have always been an obstacle to this, an infection fueled by spammers that sullies the whole experience.

And now, Meta's not only facilitating this kind of trash, it's actively encouraging it
Meta posted these during the Olympics, when you could actually see real humans, at the top of their game, based on years of dedication and training, performing in such events. Why would I go to Meta AI to concoct an artificial version of this, when it's happening, when I could actually see great, real performances?

That's the area in which Meta appears to be getting it wrong on AI: simply rolling out features that add no real-world value and indeed, dilute the Facebook and IG experience. For example, AI chatbots have some value, and given the growing use of tools like ChatGPT, conversational AI will increasingly become a format for search and discovery relied upon far more.

Celebrity-styled AI chatbots?
Do I care if it's the voice of Snoop Doggie giving me the answers? Okay, that's novelty, and the first few interactions will leave you to laugh. However, for some reason, Meta paid millions of dollars to these celebrities to use their likeness in order to encourage use of their chatbots.
Which didn't work. Meta ended its celebrity chatbots project a few months back, although it's adding celebrity voices for Meta AI. That'll fail too, while it keeps pumping out suggestions like the posts above, on how users can create fantastical versions of things that aren't real, that didn't happen, and frankly, look ridiculous.

I don't even see much of a market for this within the set of folks that continuously barrage us with "Magic Happens" memes as such, there is such constrained value for this form of AI in a Facebook and IG context.

But Meta has pumped in billions of dollars into AI investments, so it needs to get the people interested somehow so it keeps poking us with these examples saying "Try it" looking for more interest in its AI products.

Not to downplay the value of generative AI-its ability to produce human-like outputs is great and there are certainly expanded applications of the technology that will revolutionize industries and tasks.

But in its zeal for the AI sweepstakes, there's a chasm between excitement among the rank and file about these instruments and their utility value to working people.

At some point, there will be applications that do bridge that gap. But we're not there yet.