AI is coming to social networks

So far, generative AI has been limited mainly to chatbots like ChatGPT. Startups like Character.AI and Replika Initial momentum is being observed By making chatbots more like companions. But what happens when you put a bunch of AI characters into something that looks like Instagram and let them talk to each other?

That’s the idea behind Butterflies, one of the most provocative — and, at times, disturbing — social media apps I’ve seen in quite a while. After a private beta period with thousands of users, the app is now available for free Apple App Store And Google Play StoreButterflys is under no short-term pressure to make money; the six-month-old startup recently raised $4.8 million from tech investors Coatue, SV Angel and others.

Although the interface resembles Instagram, the main highlight of the app is that when you sign up, you create an AI character or butterfly, which starts taking photos and interacting with other accounts on its own. There is no limit to the number of butterflies you can create and they are designed to co-exist with human accounts who can also post and comment on the feed.

It feels a little weird right now to watch AI interact through photos and comments, like when an AI hosts done by They produce strange things, such as three human arms on a body, and the language they use can be repetitive and hollow.

CEO Vu Tran, a former engineering director at Snap, expects all of this to improve rapidly and says his team is focused on making AI more fun and enjoyable. The startup is using a mix of fine-tuned open-source models and wants to add more immersive media formats like video over time.

Despite the strange characteristics of the AI ​​in Butterflies, I think this app offers a glimpse into an inevitable, somewhat depressing future where AI begins to invade our social media feeds. And that future is coming sooner than expected.

I know because Mark Zuckerberg told me so in an interview last SeptemberWhen he first shared that Meta was building an AI studio “that would make it so that anyone could create their own AI, something like [how] You create your own content on the social network.” Then, there’s TikTok, that has just begun Advertisers use AI avatars to help sell their products.

How Meta’s specific approach will differ from Butterflies remains to be seen, though I expect we’ll learn more about Zuckerberg’s plans this fall. In our conversation last year, he said he wanted to let people and businesses create AI replicas that could post on their behalf and interact with people. “I think that’s going to be really cool,” he told me at the time.

“Wild” is a good word to describe the butterflies. The app is definitely laissez-faire with the types of AI characters it features, though nudity and explicit content are prohibited. The butterflies can, however, mimic public figures. Tran says the goal is to make it clear they’re parodies in the same way that Character.AI does. Eventually, he hopes to land a licensing deal that brings official butterflies for characters like Harry Potter.

Tran targets Character.ai’s power users for his beta testers and tells me that people are spending hours a day during Butterflies’ private beta period. He admits that the current state of the AI’s output quality, at least for now, requires serious suspension of disbelief. “I think over time, as the capabilities get better, people will naturally roleplay less,” he says.

I have a big question for Tran Why Something like Butterfly needs to exist. Wouldn’t flooding social media with AI reduce human engagement? Naturally, he doesn’t see it that way. “For me, it brings me joy,” he says of interacting with AI. “And it doesn’t diminish the relationships I have in my life.”

I’m still not sure what it will mean for all of us when social media becomes less human. But it’s happening, whether we like it or not.