We're reading: How Facebook's AI 'Shrimp Jesus' is creating a zombie internet

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By clicking “Sign Up”, you accept our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy . You can opt-out at any time. Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you're on the go. download the app Sign up to get the inside scoop on today’s biggest stories in markets, tech, and business — delivered daily. Read preview 404 Media has been pulling the thread of the great mystery of "What the heck is going on with all this AI image spam on Facebook?" Over the last few months, they've reported on various versions of AI people doing chainsaw carvings, children showing off bicycles made of vegetables, old people blowing out birthday cakes, dying or mutilated children, and my personal favorite: Shrimp Jesus. This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Finally, Jason Koebler presents his theory of what all this AI engagement bait spam means: I think we should not view Facebook's AI spam through the lens of the "Dead Internet." The platform has become something worse than bots talking to bots. It is bots talking to bots, bots talking to bots at the direction of humans, humans talking to humans, humans talking to bots, humans arguing about a fake thing made by a bot, humans talking to no one without knowing it, hijacked human accounts turned into bots, humans worried that the other humans they're talking to are bots, hybrid human/bot accounts, the end of a shared reality, and, at the center of all of this: One of the most valuable companies on the planet enabling this shitshow because its human executives and shareholders have too much money riding on the mass adoption of a reality-breaking technology to do anything about it. My take: The weird and sometimes unsettling nature of AI images is fascinating, but underneath the phenomenon of these AI-powered pages proliferating, there appears to be a classic case of traditional engagement bait. The AI stuff builds up a page's following — and that can be profitable for the page owner. The question I'm left with is why is Facebook allowing this? 404 Media's report notes that occasionally, Meta will take action against certain pages, but only in really specific cases — like with a hacked account and when it removed AI-generated images of disfigured children. Those probably ran afoul of some other existing content guidelines. Advertisement I have a few theories about why Facebook is (for now) allowing this kind of AI image spam: