They’re calling it “AI slop” that no one really asked for.
Tech founders and executives are dunking on Meta’s new feature, unveiled on Thursday. It allows users to generate AI content on the Meta AI app and share it on Facebook or Instagram.
Meta is calling it Vibes — a feature “designed to make it easier to find creative inspiration and experiment with Meta AI’s media tools.” Critics see it as a new way to get susceptible users hooked on mindless, artificially-generated content.
“AI was supposed to be about developing intelligence, instead they’re spending tens of billions of dollars to make it churn out cat videos so we’re more dumbed down by social media,” Arnaud Bertrand, investor and cofounder of HouseTrip, wrote on X. “What an insane waste of resources, in all respects.”
Meta’s chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, has been getting the brunt of the criticisms on X, as tech founders reposted his announcement to roast the new feature.
Alex Cohen, cofounder and CEO of Hello Patient, a healthcare AI assistant platform, posted a meme with the caption: “FINALLY. PURE SLOP.”
Nikita Bier, head of product at X, which is supposed to be a competitor to Meta’s Threads, commented under Wang’s post: “give me the slop stream.”
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Threads that Vibes is a preview of some of the “new product directions” the company is exploring.
Some critics framed Meta’s new venture as a grave warning sign for how artificial intelligence, with all its potential, will be exploited.
Jake Cooper, founder of Railway, a software infrastructure platform, wrote on X that Meta’s Vibes is “not the future I would like to live in.”
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“AI can and should be used for good/A partner in craft, allowing us to move faster to go farther,” he wrote. “It can also be used for evil/To hook you an infinite IV of cheap crap/Let’s choose the former please.”
This is not the first AI feature Meta rolled out that has been widely panned by critics who have been concerned with how the company targets its most vulnerable users, such as teens or lonely individuals.
After Meta unveiled chatbots, Business Insider’s senior correspondent Amanda Hoover wrote how Meta seems intent on luring more users to artificial friends amid the loneliness epidemic.
In August, the company had to tweak its AI chatbot so that it would stop engaging in romantic conversations with children.
Shyam Sankar, chief technology officer of Palantir Technologies, wrote on X that he found some comfort that many users appeared to “categorically reject this AI slop.”
He said AI shouldn’t be use for “frivolous pursuits that further fracture our attention and connection to humanity.” Instead, the technology should be used to “empower the American worker,” echoing the position of Palantir’s cofounder, Alex Karp, who often talks about how the tech industry should refocus its priorities on urgent challenges faced by the West.
“I’m just energized to see that a growing number of voices see this too,” Sankar wrote in an email to Business Insider. “Makes me optimistic that America will win.”
