Meta’s AI tool offered to sell a man’s air fryer for free on Facebook Marketplace, a user has told Metro.
Teja Karlapudi, 30, listed an Instant Pot air fryer earlier this month for $75 (about £55) on the social media platform’s digital thrift shop.
But he was surprised, to say the least, when he opened up a message from an interested buyer only to see a message he never sent.
‘I still have it. Want it for free?’ the message says.
Teja, who is based in the US, told Metro: ‘Usually, the most common question that people ask on Facebook Marketplace is, “Is this available?”
‘If I don’t immediately respond, they might change their mind, so I thought Meta’s new AI reply feature would help me respond quickly to those questions with “Yes, its available, are you interested?” something like that. So I turned it on.’
Teja only realised Meta’s built-in virtual assistant had responded in this way four hours later, as his mobile phone was on do not disturb.
The mobile application developer replied: ‘Sorry, that’s Meta’s new AI-generated text… Yes it is available.’
The keen buyer, however, never replied.
‘I think they thought I’m some sort of a scammer or spammer. There is a lot of spam/scam in Facebook marketplace,’ the code-writer added.
‘I have also turned it on for few other listings, and for those it did reply correctly. It went into this charity mode only for this one.’
Teja did not report the rogue message to Meta, which he stressed was a suggested reply he did not type himself.
Metro understands that this was caused by a bug that Meta has since patched.
Some Marketplace users say they have been offered a way to write a customisable auto-response to certain buyer questions since January.
Meta is gradually introducing AI auto-replies for Instagram, where a virtual personal assistant responds to certain chats on behalf of content creators.
Such messages are labelled as being generated by the AI bot, which is made with Meta’s AI Studio.
‘Your AI can answer common questions for you so you have time to connect with more people and your fans can get quicker responses,’ apage on the Instagram Help Center says.
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