Sharing the spammy and scammy ‘goodbye to Meta AI’ message on Instagram, celebrities demonstrate that they’re as hopeful and hopeless as the rest of us.
Three days ago, actress and pro onscreen-crier Julianne Moore was having the time of her life at the Bottega Veneta fashion show in Milan. “SO PLEASED I’M AN OTTER!!!” she exclaimed on Instagram, referencing the leather animal and insect-shaped beanbags on which the bums of the rich and famous rested for the “deeply felt, romantic and human” show.
Here in New Zealand, far, far away from Milan fashion week, exclaiming about otters is reserved for the more humble but nonetheless deeply felt pursuit of ensconcing ourselves in tales of their escape.
A mere 72 hours after discovering she was an otter, Moore found herself, Jin-like, looking for an escape. Her prison is not the zoo but the hellscape that is Instagram or any Meta-owned product, and having your lifetime work as a poster being used to train Meta’s AI.
Looking to strike a blow for freedom in these technocratic times, Moore posted this message to her Instagram stories:
“Goodbye Meta Al,” the message read. “Please note an attorney has advised us to put this on, failure to do so may result in legal consequences. As Meta is now a public entity all members must post a similar statement. If you do not post at least once it will be assumed you are okay with them using your information and photos. I do not give Meta or anyone else permission to use any of my personal data, profile information or photos.”
The post has since been labelled with a “false information” sticker and a link to fact-checking site Lead Stories.
While it reads like vaguely threatening legalese, it is unfortunately completely meaningless and an example of “copypasta”, a delicious-sounding but pernicious online and viral form of the old school chain letter. When you pronounce the “pasta” bit like paste, the mechanism and form are simple. Aided by conveniently sharable “add yours” stickers on Instagram, it’s just false information in text form that’s repeatedly copied and pasted online. Versions of it crop up occasionally, with pseudo-copyright notices circulating widely on Facebook in 2012.
Posting the message does nothing to revoke Meta’s permission to use your data to train its AI as it races alongside other big tech companies to win the AI arms race. Multibillion-dollar investments are being made in generative AI, and, rudely, not even the star of The Hours and May-December can stop them. Meta has said it will spend $35-$40bn on AI this year. That news was richly rewarded in April with a share price bump. Meta’s stock is now up 37% this year as of July 31. This recent round of copypasta wielded by an Academy Award-winning actress doesn’t even register as far as slaps on their Richy Rich wrists go.
As The Verge reported earlier this month, Meta has been feeding its AI on almost everything users have posted publicly since 2007. LinkedIn has recently been busted for possibly training its AI on user data without updating its terms and conditions. The Elon Musk-owned platform X, formerly known as Twitter, helped itself to everyone’s posts to train Grok, an AI built by another Elon Musk company, X.ai.
X and LinkedIn have, at the very least, thrown a cursory nod at giving users the ability to opt out, but realistically, publicly available data and imagery have likely been hoovered up into the machine without most of us even realising it.
Unfortunately for Moore, and unless you’re in the EU, the only real way to stop Meta hoovering up your data is to delete your account.
And yet, just as I continue to demonstrate proof of life by posting screenshots of boring text exchanges with my husband on Instagram, wrestling with feelings of self-loathing, so too must Moore continue to post as proof of having a life. Even with her real fame, she is not exempt from feeling like we must prove we have a life in order to live one. Sharing the Goodbye Meta AI message is naive, yes, but lurking beneath it is a sense of outrage about the lack of agency so many feel about being unable to escape the enshittified zoo. As precious, hapless and hopeless as it is, there’s something vaguely comforting about celebrities falling prey to the same ineffectual protests as the rest of us.
If only there was a collection of entities more powerful than Julianne Moore to advocate for citizens in the face of technology giants. Until such time, if you have a spare 8,300 francs, comfort yourself with the otter pouf that so very briefly made Julianne Moore so very pleased.