AI Characters Are Already Driving Big Engagement in Social Apps

In recent weeks there has been much discussion about the potential influx of AI characters coming to social mediaand what impact it will have on user activity.

This comes after a Meta representative explained the company’s plan introduce AI characters into your applicationsalong with profiles, biographies, etc. These characters will post, comment and engage as real people on Facebook and IG, and users are often unaware that they are not real people.

Which is strange, on many levels, but may also be the inevitable future, the logical conclusion of our increasing focus on gen AI, where replacing human engagement with artificial exchange is not only inevitable, but potentially even preferable in some cases.

This concept may seem absurd and even offensive to some, while many others are already completely sure that they will never mistakenly tackle AI bots, and that they will always be able to pick them out based on mistakes in their images, clumsy answers, or various other stories.

Still, the available evidence suggests that most people won’t know the difference, and won’t necessarily be able to tell the difference between human and AI bot engagement.

Even now, in these early stages of the AI ​​generation, we’re already seeing such additions generate great engagement.

Take Facebook, for example:

It’s clear that this AI-generated garbage has already generated a huge response in the app, so Meta knows that a large percentage of its users will engage with this, even if it’s highly unconvincing to most digitally literate people.

And AI image generators are only getting better, while also moving to video, so Meta again has a pretty clear set of data showing that humans won’t be instinctively repelled by the development of AI content that infiltrates its apps.

There are also AI characterswhich is Meta experimenting withwho will communicate in the style of the creator or celebrity.

Many more creators will soon be able to create their own displays of this type, and Meta knows that this will also increase engagement and interaction, with users likely to be unaware that they are not real.

That seems unfair and there’s a whole other conversation about developing a relationship of any kind with an AI character and what it can do mental health of people. But again, Meta already has data on these characters, knows how users react. He doesn’t plan on unleashing his AI characters without a firm understanding of what the response will be.

Meta also hired Michael Sayman last year, after he created an entire app filled with thousands of AI characters that interact with human users.

Sayman says that “tens of thousands” people signed up to his app before he joined Meta. And while many of them would, you imagine, do so out of curiosity, many also used it regularly, another indication that there is significant interest in this type of interaction and activity.

You can also refer to China and its popularity Characters generated by artificial intelligence who are now selling products on live streams on the local version of TikTok and other video apps.

As you can see, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance has already seen massive adoption of fully AI-generated video characters that are cheap to make and can showcase products, 24/7. Really, they exist now over 993,000 digital avatar companies registered only in China, while TikTok is also experimenting new models to improve their AI character accuracy.

And now it offers the same the possibility of creating video signs for TikTok, via the creative studio “Symphony”.

So while the instinctive response to Meta launching an army of AI profiles has been mostly negative, and for good reason, the data shows that people will engage with these displays and that they can and will be a good way to increase in-app . engagement and social selling opportunities.

The evidence is clear and the engagement data for such options is compelling. And while it may not seem like true “social” engagement as we know it, in terms of sharing between people, there is a certain level of demand that will likely see these AI characters generate a large response on both Facebook and IG.

Even if Meta has disclosure policies in place to ensure users can identify AI bot profiles if they want to, even if the answers they give are sometimes a bit weird and inaccurate. Even with these provisions in mind, many, probably many millions of people, will still interact with such.

So while it may be strange and even gross to some extent, and while you might personally hate the concept, the development of artificial intelligence suggests that this is coming. Whether you want it or not.

As such, it might be worth exploring how you can incorporate these AI representations into your workflow and whether there are ways these characters and processes can really benefit your social strategy.