One of the key aspects of Facebook that govern the platform is its recommendation Algorithm, because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up showing relevant ads to people. However, it bears mentioning that this algorithm has been overrun by AI spam, as spotted by researchers from Georgetown University and Stanford Internet Observatory. These ads take users to sites that contain AI Generated news stories that contain countless ads that are full of scams.
With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that the recommendation algorithm itself may very well be at fault here. The best example of this might just be Shrimp Jesus, which is an AI generated image of Jesus composed entirely of shrimp. This has prompted many users to take to X, formerly known as Twitter, and wonder what’s happening on the Meta owned social media platform.
Entire pages are being made that are littered with this type of AI content, and the problem does not look like it will be going away anytime soon. Quite on the contrary, the algorithm appears to be rewarding pages that put up content of this sort since its outlandish nature ends up creating more engagement than might have been the case otherwise.
Research suggests that the people clicking on some of these links might not know that the images are AI generated. This points to a massive issue wherein AI generated content could be used to spread misinformation, though in this case it is simply being used for the sole and express purpose of click farming.
It will be interesting to see where things go from here on out, since some celebrities such as Simon Cowell are also being impersonated. With Facebook struggling to appeal to the younger crowd at this current point in time, such phenomena may only hasten the platform’s decline. AI generated content is stress testing many of the platforms that we have taken for granted, including Google, and something must be done in order to prevent the internet from being consumed by it.
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