AI-generated user accounts are the new normal for Instagram and Facebook parent, Meta. Here's how AI influencers and artificial accounts are evolving.

Instagram has begun testing Meta AI to insert AI-generated images of users in their feeds. Meta AI's "Imagine Yourself" feature prompts its image generation tool to create user portraits unprompted, following the onboarding process. Meta confirmed intentional insertion of AI-generated portraits, which are only visible to the individual user.

Something about George Romero’s 1978 film about doomed survivors riding out the zombie apocalypse in a shopping mall feels resonant today as I look across Meta’s suite of AI-created profiles. The movie’s blue-skinned corpses don’t know they’re dead. They just wander through the shopping center on autopilot, looking for something new to consume.