You’ll find Meta AI front and center in Meta’s apps: In the Facebook Messenger app, for example, tap Chats and you’ll see a Meta AI input box right at the top, above your real life friends and family members. Tap inside that box, and you can start chatting about whatever topic you like. You can also tap Meta AI on the tab bar at the bottom.

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.

Since late 2023, around a dozen AI Instagram and Facebook accounts created by their social media parent company Meta quietly existed on the platforms.