Instagram and Facebook will soon be closer than ever. In an announcement made yesterday, Meta confirmed that it was rolling out a centralised support hub for the two apps — recognising that its efforts have been rocky in the past, or rather, haven’t “always met expectations”. The best bit? Meta’s belief that throwing an AI assistant into the deep end of the pool will help it resolve matters, rather than increase them. We’ll see about that.
How many times do we have to teach you this lesson?
“Today, we’re rolling out new, easier ways to get account support and sharing updates we’ve made to keep your Facebook and Instagram accounts even more secure through advancements in AI.”
Meta calls it “the future of always-on support.” We call it hiring fewer humans to do a worse job. Meta sticking an AI-powered assistant into the driver’s seat will save its users’ time, sure, but the quality of that help is suspect. If all goes to plan, however, Meta reckons it’ll offer more personal help, like retrieving a lost or hacked account, updating your settings, or keeping your profile up to date. Data ain’t gonna sell itself, yeah?
Read More: Meta details upcoming parental controls that limit AI chatbot access for Teen accounts
Meta’s AI-powered security systems are also in place to help detect and halt account threats such as phishing “by analyzing a wide range of signals in real time to distinguish legitimate users from attackers.” It added that the AI system had successfully stemmed the flow of accounts being wrongfully terminated and sped up the process, while decreasing the number of successful hacks by 30% over the past year in the US and Canada.
The new centralised support hub is rolling out now to Facebook and Instagram users globally for both the iOS and Android apps. It may take some time before the new features hit your app if they haven’t yet, but keep the apps up to date, and it should be along shortly.
