The other day I stumbled across a video essay about the nightmare trio of YouTube—MrBeast, Logan Paul and KSI—discussing their new product Lunchly, a Lunchables knockoff. In the podcast, KSI mentioned that he “ha[s], like, AI friends that [he] talk[s] to every once in a while.” This admission confused me for multiple reasons—the first being that ChatGPT is not a person, and the second being the fact that I have been noticing more and more people proudly admitting to having conversations with chatbots recently.
AI is increasingly being used in online industries because of its ability to perform time-consuming, simple tasks in impressive and often more efficient ways than humans. Within the social media sphere, many companies have harnessed the power of the technology to learn the viewing habits of its users to better serve their experience and increase viewer retention. Our social pages are personally tailored to our own interests. Brands have started to act like our friends, and virtual people are beginning to successfully market products to us. In other words, AI is beginning to make our use of social technology much more lifelike—to the point that the virtual world is beginning to blend with the real one.
Although, more technologically-advanced than ever in recent years, social media, at its core, is a very human innovation. It provides a channel for people to interact with each other. By looking through the pictures on someone’s profile or what they repost, you’re able to see a piece of them—whether that’s what they consider interesting, what they aspire to be or how they want to be presented to the world. This revelation of self manifests in real life as well. What we see on social media impacts the conversations we have and how we move through life, extending to marketing as well. Typically, businesses will make sure to appeal to the human desire to connect to, well, humans to make products appear exciting or relatable.
On social media, brands are presented as an account with a person behind it just like every other user’s account. Companies want to present themselves as friendly—or if not friendly, in possession of some sort of human state of being. A good example of this personified marketing appeared a few years ago when the fast food brand Wendy’s began to jokingly “roast” people on X. After this, many other companies’ social media pages began to mimic this tactic, having conversations amongst each other and with customers to try to garner the most attention of the public. There began to be something novel about a brand responding like a human to real people’s comments—maybe even more so than if the same responses were to come directly from an individual instead.
A study done by Hyun Ju Jeong and her fellow researchers found that personified brands are more effective at engaging customers on social media. This finding is incredibly significant in terms of brand marketing because it emphasizes the fact that humans like interacting with humans. People desire human interaction, and if a brand is able to emulate that beyond the benefits of their product or service then they will be all the more effective. But how can this same idea of artificial humanity be applied in terms of AI?
Currently AI is being used to shape our social media experience in many different ways. One of these ways is through chatbots. AI chatbots are “virtual individuals who can successfully make conversation with any human being utilizing intuitive literary abilities.” On social media, they can act and present themselves in a way similar to humans through activities such as commenting on posts or helping in customer service functions.
In AI algorithms, past data is taken in to train the system on how to best serve the consumer using the application. In the case of social media, the task is to not only present information that intrigues the user, but also to make the user stay on as long as possible. Some examples of brands that use this kind of learning algorithm are Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, X and TikTok. You may have noticed over time that your feed changes to represent content that you have been engaging with more, pushing you more and more of that same content to feed into your interests.
With the rise of virtual influencers and chatbots, I can’t help but question what the future of social media will look like. While social media began with a culture around connecting with other people, it now seems to be becoming more saturated with recycled human-like sentiments raised by computers. Everyday this technology learns more about the patterns of humans and is able to replicate them. We’re becoming used to technology and abstract entities, like companies, interacting with us. In fact, it’s pretty much expected in the modern age. An algorithm is considered bad if it doesn’t take your personal interests into consideration and continue to change in real time as you change as a person. But in turn, the algorithm is changing our own interests and how we spend our time in the real world. This creates a cyclical give and take between human and machine as technology advances.
While AI technology, such as personalized feeds generated by algorithms, is helpful to the individual user, it can also have harmful effects. There’s the possibility of becoming blocked off from certain things such as politics you do not agree with, creating division between people based on both major and superficial things. A video could be viral on TikTok with millions of views, and I may never hear of it simply because my algorithm may not have thought I’d want to hear it based on my previous scrolling pattern.
Social media’s not going to go away anytime soon. It will only continue to evolve over time with the increased use of AI. It’s just important not to let the root of it, the desire for human contact and interaction change it to the point that it becomes an uncanny regurgitation of human-like values.