There’s no doubt that generative AI has made a huge impact on the digital marketing space. AI tools have been a huge help for marketers with everything from creating engaging copy to efficiently editing images. In recent months, generative AI tools have started to make their way to social media and I am not convinced this is helpful to the social app experience.
If you’re not familiar with these new social media generative AI tools, here’s a list of the updates as of late February from SocialMediaToday:
- Facebook has an AI post creation tool, generative AI text and image creation for ads, AI chatbots based on celebrities, and AI assistant in Messenger, generative AI stickers, an AI chatbot assistant in Ray Ban Stories, and generative AI profile pictures.
- Instagram has generative AI image filters and background generation tools, and AI creation and editing options, while it’s also experimenting with a conversational AI chatbot for DMs.
- LinkedIn has an AI post composer, an AI assistant for InMails, AI article summaries, generative AI tools that can write your profile for you, and job ads suggestions, among other tools within its Recruiter and ad options.
- Snapchat has its “My AI” conversational chatbot, as well as its “Dreams” image generation tool,, along with AI-generated Snap captions (for paying subscribers), and “AI Mode” for creating generative AI Snaps.
- TikTok has AI profile images, AI effects tools, and AI song generation, while it’s also experimenting with conversational search, powered by AI, text-to-video generation, as well as an integrated chatbot experience.
- Pinterest is primarily using generative AI, at this stage, to power its back-end search and ad tools.
- X owner Elon Musk says that X’s “Grok” AI chatbot will soon be able to create in-app updates for you, while they’re also exploring visual generation via the tool.
As you can see, these tools are mostly aiming to mirror human updates and responses. Unfortunately, the effects of generative AI will ultimately be less human input and more “robot” responses. The question is- do your average social media users even want that? Although some creators or brands may find these tools useful for responding to comments or creating posts promptly, your average Facebook user probably doesn’t want to read similar-sounding updates from their friends, family, and favorite organizations all day long.
Spam has always been a massive problem for social media platforms as it is equally as annoying as it is dangerous. Security becomes an even larger concern when you can no longer differentiate human posts from robots. So, why would anyone want this and who are these social media apps trying to appeal to? At the end of the day, social media is supposed to be social interactions between humans and bot updates likely aren’t going to help with that.
As we continue to navigate generative AI in social media apps, I would suggest leaning into your humanity and realness as much as possible. Humanizing your destination is going to be a game changer when your competition is utilizing robot copy. Continue to make use of user-generated content, showing the faces behind your organization, including video content with voiceovers, and experimenting with new ways to be authentic on social media. At the end of the day, human interaction will never go out of style, but AI writing is destined to.
