Amid rising backlash about the growing presence of artificial intelligence-generated content across its apps, Meta is steamrolling ahead with its broader AI onslaught. The company launched a new app that lets users use AI to create games and tools that other people can try out.
Called Pocket, the app allows users to create new functions by typing in basic prompts for what they want to generate.
As per the app’s Google Play Store description: “Pocket is a creative platform for making and sharing gizmos. A gizmo is a small interactive thing you can tap and play with… and you can make a gizmo just by describing it.”
So if the users wanted a game that lets them beat up space aliens for galactic supremacy, they could type that in as a prompt and see what the Meta AI-powered app comes up with.
Users can also scroll through a feed of projects, called gizmos, that have been created by other users. Users can also like and comment on these projects to help raise awareness of the best vibe-coded gizmos.
That said, saying that these are coded at all is a misnomer, because the whole point is that Meta wants to democratize creativity and make it as easy as possible for users to generate whatever they like.
This could produce some interesting results, but as with most AI tools, the real truth will be in the detail, and the fact that while these tools do enable basic creation, most of the resulting outputs are very basic, and not particularly interesting. That’s likely because the creators don’t have the requisite knowledge and/or experience to create a truly compelling experience.
That’s not to say that this won’t happen. Empowering all people to create games and books and films will inevitably end up leading to some valuable, viable projects that do find a captive audience. But creating something great generally comes from experience, and learning from what’s come before, and examining what works in different genres and styles.
There’s a reason that so few people succeed as artists and game developers. Honing these skills is solidified through years of trial and error.
It’s very difficult to tap into this wavelength, even for people with a natural inclination. As such, having the capacity to create is just one part of the process, which is something that many AI enthusiasts seem to overlook.
That also relates to the Pocket app. Again, through expanded availability of creative AI tools, there may end up being some interesting projects, but the majority will probably be boring.
And if the app produces too many dull projects, people will stop scrolling, and it will die out, which seems the most likely fate for Meta’s latest AI project.
