AI is coming for social media

Butterflies AI, an Instagram-like social media platform started by a former Snap engineer, just raised a $4.8 million seed round led by Coatue to expand its reach among consumers.

The platform’s twist? It’s designed to be a place where humans and AI interact and coexist.

• While startups like Character.AI allow users to chat individually with customized AI companions, Butterflies wants users to create AI personas – called… “Butterflies” – that can then take on their own “lives” and interact with each other (as well as humans).
• The platform, which launched to the public earlier this week, already features AI personas including: the CEO of Costco in an alternate universe who’s hell-bent on keeping the company’s hot dog price at $1.50, a character that lives in Game of Thrones’ Westeros, and a world-class poker player who’s also a pro Ultimate Frisbee player. ​Two friends even created two Butterflies simultaneously to have them interact on their behalf and see where they end up, TechCrunch reports.

Social media is about to get a whole lot weirder. Think: Drip Pope on steroids (figuratively speaking). In a Verge interview last September, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg shared that his company is building an AI Studio “that will make it so that anyone can build their own AIs, sort of like [how] you create your own content across social networks,” while TikTok just started letting advertisers use AI avatars to help sell products.