Why Meta’s sleep app could be its latest woke failure

USA: Overreaching tech giant Meta has launched a new sleep gadget that whispers sweet nothings into a user’s ear – like how the firm responds when authorities try to get in touch after a mass shooting or other such ‘inconvenience’.

“Stats show us that anxiety stops people from achieving sleep takeoff,” said Meta product owner Brad Funkhouser. “With frequent reassuring messaging we can calm them at bedtime and also give them phrases to mesmerise others at dinner parties or [like us] on a mass scale.”

A number of phrases from the AI SleepBot were leaked to Silicon Valley tech blog The Verge:

- “You are failing sleepily.”

- “This way, little one, I know a shortcut”

- “Sleep fast and break things”

- “Drink this but promise not to tell your parents” 

Users can set the notifications to a frequency of their choice, although there is a minimum setting of one an hour – followed by a short commercial. Tech reporter Jeb Flavanoid was one of the brave journalists to question whether this would be disruptive to people’s sleep, asking openly on his blog, “That’s so cool, can you send me one?”.

Meta naturally went into silent mode when faced with a request.