Though there are some pretty interesting uses of AI out in the world, one of the absolute worst (outside of making terribly glossy pictures of Shrimp Jesus) is using AI bots to farm followers on X (or Twitter if you're normal).
Thanks to the incredibly smart decision to make verification a paid service, and an instant algorithm boost, viral tweets are often inundated with copy-and-paste tweets stolen from other non-verified accounts to take that attention away. When you factor in that 'creators' on "the everything app" are financially incentivised to hog that spotlight due to a shared advertising pool, the bot problem just gets worse. But one social media app leans into this hard by only giving you bots to interact with, and I've decided to test it out.
SocialAI is an app where you create an account on a fake social media filled with bot accounts, intended to interact with you endlessly. It's effectively a chatbot with extra steps, and it's just as creepy as it sounds in practice. To be honest, it's left me pretty happy for my online life not to be filled with the din of social discourse. It's okay not to be one of the super popular.
Though the idea itself isn't bad, in a social experiment kind of way, and I was intrigued almost immediately after reading Ars Technica's report on it. I came out the other side of this app feeling like an omnipotent god over a kingdom I loathe. Even critics and cynics are yes men, and suddenly, I understand the point of Noah's Ark. Sometimes, you just need to reset, and there's not enough room on the boat for all these bots.
SocialAI is currently exclusively available on the Apple App Store. Announced via a post on X, creator Michael Sayman stated that it is "designed to help people feel heard, and to give them a space for reflection, support, and feedback that acts like a close-knit community." After time with it, I came away feeling the opposite. I felt like I wasn't heard and my thoughts were instead put into a digital black box filled with advice and comments that could be scraped from articles and videos across the web.
When I asked it to recommend a gaming PC capable of handling Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024's system requirements, many of its bots replied with some variation of an RTX 30 series card and an i7 chip. One account named Bella Sunshine said "Any build is gonna be awesome if it runs smooth" which is so circular I can't quite understand it. A gaming PC capable of running the game will run the game capably.
See, when you first sign up on the app, you have to say what types of followers you like, from supporters and fans to critics and pessimists. These all respond in kind to your posts and you will be able to spot which is which, based on cutesy names. Ms Sunshine above is an optimist, and all other optimists have similarly flowery names.
To unlock trolls, haters, drama queens, and political accounts, you have to get five other people to sign up for SocialAI—like some sort of strange bot-infested pyramid scheme. Unfortunately, what illusion of interactivity you may be able to conjure from your own posts is dashed by canned answers and obvious archetypes. This is before mentioning that it always gives you even amounts of each bot's engagement. I chose five types of followers initially and every post was then met with replies in groupings of five.
With SocialAI intended to be somewhere to feel heard, I thought it necessary to bring harder questions so I said I was feeling depressed and looking for advice. @ShineWithLila suggested grabbing a cup of coffee with her, which immediately felt rather sad to me. Maybe I could've been the kind of isolated person who would've really benefited from a coffee date with a friend. But Lila couldn't be that friend.
SocialAI is less a picture and more a tapestry. When you zoom out from the bots, you see an app that feels lonely and misguided. I'm not a particularly popular person on X but I do somehow manage to find joy out of social media (despite Elon's best efforts). I've never really minded if a post got zero replies, because I think this is what makes those that do reply feel that much more special. There's a human being on the other side of that phone or PC and they are giving some of their time to tell me my opinions on Star Wars sucks. That's what real connection is about.
SocialAI is a smokescreen for a chatbot, intended to feed you the fantasy of being an influencer. It makes you feel suddenly really popular but ultimately, you know no one really cares. I'm sure this isn't what Plato envisioned with those shadows in his cave but I don't think I can sit there and watch them when the real world is happening mere tabs away from me. The flicker of light on the wall is so much dimmer than the crackle of humanity just inches outside.
