[{"type": "text", "data": "The first time I used SocialAI, I was sure the app was performance art. That was the only logical explanation for why I would willingly sign up to have AI bots named Blaze Fury and Trollington Nefarious, well, troll me.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "Even the app\u2019s creator, Michael Sayman, admits that the premise of SocialAI may confuse people. His announcement this week of the app read a little like a generative AI joke: \u201cA private social network where you receive millions of AI-generated comments offering feedback, advice, and reflections.\u201d", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "But, no, SocialAI is real, if \u201creal\u201d applies to an online universe in which every single person you interact with is a bot.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "There\u2019s only one real human in the SocialAI equation. That person is you. The new iOS app is designed to let you post text like you would on Twitter or Threads. An ellipsis appears almost as soon as you do so, indicating that another person is loading up with ammunition, getting ready to fire back. Then, instantaneously, several comments appear, cascading below your post, each and every one of them written by an AI character. In the new new version of the app, just rolled out today, these AIs also talk to each other.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "When you first sign up, you\u2019re prompted to choose these AI character archetypes: Do you want to hear from Fans? Trolls? Skeptics? Odd-balls? Doomers? Visionaries? Nerds? Drama Queens? Liberals? Conservatives? Welcome to SocialAI, where Trollita Kafka, Vera D. Nothing, Sunshine Sparkle, Progressive Parker, Derek Dissent, and Professor Debaterson are here to prop you up or tell you why you\u2019re wrong.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "pic", "data": "https://gugudu-1322575465.cos.ap-shanghai.myqcloud.com/20240919/IMG_2566.jpg", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": "

Screenshot of the instructions for setting up the Social AI app.

\n", "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "Is SocialAI appalling, an echo chamber taken to the extreme? Only if you ignore the truth of modern social media: Our feeds are already filled with bots, tuned by algorithms, and monetized with AI-driven ad systems. As real humans we do the feeding: freely supplying social apps fresh content, baiting trolls, buying stuff. In exchange, we\u2019re amused, and occasionally feel a connection with friends and fans.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "As notorious crank Neil Postman wrote in 1985, \u201cAnyone who is even slightly familiar with the history of communications knows that every new technology for thinking involves a trade-off.\u201d The trade-off for social media in the age of AI is a slice of our humanity. SocialAI just strips the experience down to pure artifice.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "\u201cWith a lot of social media, you don\u2019t know who the bot is and who the real person is. It\u2019s hard to tell the difference,\u201d Sayman says. \u201cI just felt like creating a space where you\u2019re able to know that they\u2019re 100 percent AIs. It\u2019s more freeing.\u201d", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "pic", "data": "https://gugudu-1322575465.cos.ap-shanghai.myqcloud.com/20240919/IMG_2568.jpg", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": "Person Text Electronics Mobile Phone Phone Face and Head", "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "You might say Sayman has a knack for apps. As a teenage coder in Miami, Florida, during the financial crisis, Sayman gained fame for building a suite of apps to support his family, who had been considering moving back to Peru. Sayman later ended up working in product jobs at Facebook, Google, and Roblox. SocialAI was launched from Sayman\u2019s own venture-backed app studio, Friendly Apps.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "In many ways his app is emblematic of design thinking rather than pure AI innovation. SocialAI isn\u2019t really a social app, but ChatGPT in the container of a social broadcast app. It\u2019s an attempt to redefine how we interact with generative AI. Instead of limiting your ChatGPT conversation to a one-to-one chat window, Sayman posits, why not get your answers from many bots, all at the same time?", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "Over Zoom earlier this week, he explained to me how he thinks of generative AI like a smoothie if cups hadn\u2019t yet been invented. You can still enjoy it from a bowl or plate, but those aren\u2019t the right vessel. SocialAI, Sayman says, could be the cup.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "Almost immediately Sayman laughed. \u201cThis is a terrible analogy,\u201d he said.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "Sayman is charming and clearly thinks a lot about how apps fit into our world. He\u2019s a team of one right now, relying mostly on OpenAI\u2019s technology to power SocialAI, blended with some other custom AI models. (Sayman rate-limits the app so that he doesn\u2019t go broke in \u201cthree minutes\u201d from the fees he\u2019s paying to OpenAI. He also hasn\u2019t quite yet figured out how he\u2019ll make money off of SocialAI.) He knows he\u2019s not the first to launch an AI-character app; Meta has burdened its apps with AI characters, and the Character AI app, which was just quasi-acquired by Google, lets you interact with a huge number of AI personas.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "But Sayman is hand-wavy about this competition. \u201cI don\u2019t see my app as, you\u2019re going to be interacting with characters who you think might be real,\u201d he says. \u201cThis is really for seeking answers to conflict resolution, or figuring out if what you\u2019re trying to say is hurtful and get feedback before you post it somewhere else.\u201d", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "\u201cSomeone joked to me that they thought Elon Musk should use this, so he could test all of his posts before he posts them on X,\u201d Sayman said.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "I\u2019d actually tried that, tossing some of the most trafficked tweets from Elon Musk and the Twitter icon Dril into my SocialAI feed. I shared a news story from WIRED; the link was unclickable, because SocialAI doesn\u2019t support link-sharing. (There\u2019s no one to share it with, anyway.) I repurposed the viral \u201cBean Dad\u201d tweet and purported to be a Bean Mom on SocialAI, urging my 9-year-old daughter to open a can of beans herself as a life lesson. I posted political content. I asked my synthetic SocialAI followers who else I should follow.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "pic", "data": "https://gugudu-1322575465.cos.ap-shanghai.myqcloud.com/20240919/IMG_2570.jpg", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": "

Post made using Social AI

\n", "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "The bots obliged and flooded my feed with comments, like Reply Guys on steroids. But their responses lacked nutrients or human messiness. Mostly, I told Sayman, it all felt too uncanny, that I had a hard time crossing that chasm and placing value or meaning on what the bots had to say.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "Sayman encouraged me to craft more posts along the lines of Reddit\u2019s \u201cAm I the Asshole\u201d posts: Am I wrong in this situation? Should I apologize to a friend? Should I stay mad at my family forever? This, Sayman says, is the real purpose of SocialAI. I tried it. For a second the SocialAI bot comments lit up my lizard brain, my id and superego, the \u201cI\u2019m so right\u201d instinct. Then Trollita Kafka told me, essentially, that I was in fact the asshole.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "One aspect of SocialAI that clearly does not represent the dawn of a new era: Sayman has put out a minimum viable product without communicating important guidelines around privacy, content policies, or how SocialAI or OpenAI might use the data people provide along the way. (Move fast, break things, etc.) He says he\u2019s not using anyone\u2019s posts to train his own AI models, but notes that users are still subject to OpenAI\u2019s data-training terms, since he uses OpenAI\u2019s API. You also can\u2019t mute or block a bot that has gone off the rails.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "At least, though, your feed is always private by default. You don\u2019t have any \u201creal\u201d followers. My editor at WIRED, for example, could join SocialAI himself but will never be able to follow me or see that I copied and pasted an Elon Musk tweet about wanting to buy Coca-Cola and put the cocaine back in it, just as he could not follow my ChatGPT account and see what I\u2019m enquiring about there.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}, {"type": "text", "data": "As a human on SocialAI, you will never interact with another human. That\u2019s the whole point. It\u2019s your own little world with your own army of AI characters ready to bolster you or tear you down. You may not like it, but it might be where you\u2019re headed anyway. You might already be there.", "bold": null, "ulist": null, "desc": null, "quote": null}]

I Stared Into the AI Void With the SocialAI App