A Bug on Instagram made everyone's friends into Artificial Intelligence

On Saturday, a technical issue on Instagram led to a lot of confusion when user contact lists were inadvertently marked with the tag "AI." People found it impossible to tell friends apart as a result of the unforeseen problem, which led to complaints on social media.

Friend Lists Became Unusable

Reddit users first brought attention to the issue when they shared photos of their full Instagram contact list with the label "AI" changed. These "AI" titles made it more difficult to utilize, even though profile photographs were left intact. Users had to manually copy and paste URLs because basic functions like sending movies and messages were impacted.

"I am unable to locate any of my friends," one Reddit member posted. They're all simply referred to as AI. This is absurd. Similar annoyances were expressed by others who referred to the software as "unusable."

Speculation Over AI Rollout and System Testing

The problem was accompanied by the irrelevant in-app notification that "AI chats are not yet available to everyone." This raised the possibility that the bug occurred during internal testing since Instagram's parent company, Meta, may be getting ready to roll out more AI functions.

As of Saturday morning, Meta had not released a formal statement elucidating the occurrence or verifying if it was caused by an internal fault or an AI update. Additionally, the business did not offer a timeframe for fixing the issue.


Instagram's artificial intelligence tools have raised concerns before. Concerns over the platform's automated moderation mechanisms were raised in June when users reported being banned without cause. Critics claim that AI is being used without enough human oversight or transparency.