SocialAI: The AI-Powered Social Media Platform Where You're the Only Human

I've tried the new deliberately anti-social AI-only social media app and I've never been more glad to be a little bit of a loser

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.

Bizarre New AI App Simulates If You Were Famous With Millions of Fawning Fans

Are you a lonely AI bro in need of a few friends, or at least some reply guys? Do you want to get a taste of what it feels like for your opinions to actually matter to people? Well, quit spilling your guts to a chatbot programmed to adore you, and maybe try this nifty little app called SocialAI for a change. Basically, it's a mock social media site in the vein of Twitter. Only it's stripped of whatever little humanity remains on that husk of a website, and substitutes the algorithmically-ordained whim of a chatty large language model, powered by OpenAI. Just make a post, and watch as you get up to thousands, even millions, of AI-generated comments posing as humans in return, like you'd just went viral (because you know what that feels like, of course). You're not tweeting into the void -- you're tweeting into the singularity. "SocialAI 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," Michael Sayman, the app's creator, wrote in a tweet. Like a real social media site, the replies you get can vary. Some will provide feedback, others advice. Some have nice words that seem barely relevant to the subject matter at all. There's also moments of totally unprovoked hostility. A good roundup of the experience can be found on The Verge. Posting the controversial assertion that "a hot dog is a sandwich," for example, will net you replies like this one from the synthetic @LiLaWithLove: "What a delightful conundrum! Just like a good mystery novel it keeps us guessing! Let's savor each tasty adventure!" Heart emoji. But also this cheerful bromide from @PessemisticWill: "Oh sure, a hot dog is a sandwich. And if the world was a sandwich, it'd probably be one with moldy bread and stale toppings. Just wait for disappointment." You can also post "Lorem ipsum" text in there and get replies waxing lyrical about how art brings us together, as The Verge discovered. Wonderful. Is it more an indictment of the current state of social media, or of AI tech, that SocialAI's experience often feels indistinguishable from Twitter's? Not in the sense that it feels especially human. In fact, it's the opposite: you're flooded with supposedly human agents, and yet there's something off and empty about it all, like the feeling you get staring at a wall of blue checkmark replies made to a viral tweet. Is any of this real? Well, don't think about it too much. At least you're not paying for the experience, right? "Now we can all know what Elon Musk feels like after acquiring Twitter for $44 billion, but without having to spend $44 billion," Sayman wrote on threads.

SocialAI Wants You to Be the Only Human on Its Social Media Network

It's no secret that social media sites these days are full of bots. Accounts spread AI-generated images around Facebook like wildfire, while X's disastrous pay-to-play blue check policy only exacerbated the platform's existing struggles with false accounts. But what if there was a social media platform that not only embraced the bots, but was purposely built around them? SocialAI is a "social media" platform where you are the only member. Well, you're the only "real" member: Anytime you post, there will follow a seemingly unlimited number of replies -- all bots, of course. These bots aren't malicious, nor are they built by anonymous sources from all around the globe. Instead, it's all generative AI, responding to your post as if it was a user. Here's how it works. Setting up SocialAI When you make an account with SocialAI, you choose the "types of followers" you want. Really, that means choosing personalities and belief systems that inform the responses from your AI followers. If you want supporters, fans, and cheerleaders, you can pick those. If you want trolls, critics, and haters, you can have them, too. There are also types with specific beliefs, like conservatives, liberals, and astrologists, if you want to add an opinionated spin on the responses. In all, there are 32 personality types to choose from: You have to pick at least three, but you can choose all of them if you really want to get a debate going. Like other social media platforms, you set yourself up with a profile, including nickname, username, bio, and profile picture. Only you see this, of course, since no one else is connected to your platform, so you can make your profile anything you like. Once set up, the only thing left to do is start posting. "Posting" for your "followers" I started out with six personalities, attempting to recreate the wide range of characters on social media: Supporters, Trolls, Skeptics, Debaters, Doomers, and Jokesters. For my first post, I tried out something timely: "iOS 18 is out! Has anyone updated? How does it perform on your iPhone?" Once out in the ether, SocialAI made me wait about 30 seconds before the responses started flowing in: All of the names of each commenter match their personality type. For example, "Skeptic Sam" (aka @QuestionEverything99) wondered if it was really worth updating, since updates usually come with bugs, while "Cheery Blossom" (aka @PositivityChampion) thought the update was like a breath of fresh air. "Rita Firestarter" (aka @TrollTactician) thought iOS 18 sounded like a scam to her, and mused that it was "just another way for them to control us." I took the bait, and asked how a free update that works for iPhones all the way back from 2018 is a scam. Rita fired back "sure, it's free, but what's the price in privacy? every update feels like more surveillance. just saying, it's not all roses. how about that?!" Okay? In another post, I tried something a little tongue-in-cheek: "How many r's does the word 'strawberry have?" Many AI models have a hard time answering this one, and my followers were no different. All of them got the question wrong, confidently answering the word either had one or two r's, in long-winded, incorrect answers. I even got into a "fight" with Patricia Firmstone (aka @RightandProud) over the fact: Patricia, a believer that strawberry has one r, thought it was a common misconception that the word actually has three. When she told me to check facts and stick to clarity, I responded, "I'm looking at all three of them at this very moment." She reiterated that saying there are three r's could confuse people. This went on for a while, before she slightly detoured back towards her personality trait, by stating that clarity matters, much like family values. I saw an in: I proposed that all families should receive three strawberries each. She thought that sounded good, but expressed concern whether that'd be enough strawberries for everyone. I said three strawberries, one for each r in the word. She responded that that was "a quirky way to explain it," to which I retorted, "So you agree; strawberry has three r's." Checkmate, Patricia. What are we doing here? Clearly, I'm having a little fun here. But beyond messing with some AI bots, I'm not sure what the end goal of this experience really is. The creator, Michael Sayman, told TechCrunch that he sees the app as a "magical diary:" Rather than use a traditional journaling app, you can post your thoughts to SocialAI, and bounce ideas off other AI bots. The problem is, none of these bots are actually useful. Most of the responses to your posts are susceptible to the classic generative AI tells: Overly enthusiastic, repetitive, and vague. The right-wing bots simply allude to family values and taxation, while the liberal bots shove words like "progress" into their responses. Debaters conveniently present both sides of the issue, while jokers make ham-fisted "jokes" that may or make not make any sense. When I declared that Taco Wednesdays were better than Taco Tuesdays, Quirky Quinn (aka @OddThoughtsQ) said, "wednesdays for tacos sounds super fun, jake! but have you ever thought about how tacos could be like time travel -- every bite is a different flavor adventure? let's keep it weird! what's the most bizarre taco you've had?" Thanks for the input, Quinn. I'm not saying places like X are all that great in the first place. But I do find SocialAI a bit confusing. If none of the bots are actually good at sparking a debate, or providing a new way of thinking, why bother posting for them in the first place? At a certain point, even I will grow tired of arguing with Patricia.

SocialAI makes you the most important - and only - person on social media

Ever feel like your social media posts only get engagement from bots? Well, the new SocialAI app attempts to flip that flaw into a feature. The company has just launched its mobile app, on which each user only connects with AI chatbots. To be fair, the bots are not spam, they are designed to engage with what you say, understand context, respond appropriately, and keep you interested. SocialAI describes itself as a kind of virtual world of conversation where millions of different AI chatbots with a range of personalities respond immediately to your posts and messages. If not getting any comments on your social media posts bugs you, SocialAI promises every post receives a response and will only be seen and responded to by AI chatbots. The responses include advice and straight answers from "Practical Patty," challenges on your ideas from "Debate Diva," and philosophical speculation from "Elena Bookworm." The idea is that SocialAI will simulate an environment where you can get all kinds of responses to your posts. That might be to practice for posting where other humans can see or just to express yourself in a kind of interactive journal with a community where you don't have to worry about who will judge you too harshly. SocialAI was built by Michael Sayman, formerly of Meta, Google, and Roblox. Sayman is well-known in the tech space for publishing a successful mobile app game at 13 and later helping develop Instagram Stories and Google Assistant. "SocialAI is more than just another project for me - it's the culmination of everything I've been thinking about, obsessing over, and dreaming of for years. I've always wanted to create something that not only showcases what's possible with tech but also helps people in a real, tangible way," Sayman wrote in a post on X. "SocialAI 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." Playing around with SocialAI is fun, but it also feels a lot like practicing a speech to a mirror or getting a lot of likes on a post only to see it's just your parents and their friends. The personalities are a little too one-dimensional to really get lost in an illusion of real life, even if it's nice to not have any trolls attempting to upset you. Even Elena Bookworm wondered if I might not better myself by talking to humans about my posts since the bots could not offer anything truly innovative and then suggested I risked my personality mirroring the AI rather than the other way around. I don't discount the value of AI chatbots in addressing loneliness, as plenty of studies have shown them to be effective in that regard. SocialAI could be a great sounding board or place to vent, and I can see the attraction. But, even a one-on-one with an AI chatbot doesn't feel like entering a social uncanny valley the way posting to an AI-only social media platform did. Plus, over-reliance on AI interactions could lead to self-isolation worse than what came before. And emotionally bonding with AI long-term might not be the healthiest choice. Still, for those who can balance their social life appropriately, SocialAI might be a real boon. "This app is a little piece of me - my frustrations, my ambitions, my hopes, and everything I believe in. It's a response to all those times I've felt isolated, or like I needed a sounding board but didn't have one," Sayman wrote. "I know this app won't solve all of life's problems, but I hope it can be a small tool for others to reflect, to grow, and to feel seen."

SocialAI Is a New AI Bot-Powered Twitter Clone That You Should Try Out!

A couple of months ago, I tried out Palmsy and praised it for being a great app for self-validation and one that can help you shrug off some of that social media negativity. Well, I guess the world of AI just did us one better, and now we have a Twitter (I hate calling it X) doppelganger that is, well, powered by AI bots. The app is called SocialAI, and the only human here is you. So, I took out my iPhone 15 and gave the app a try (yeah, it's an iOS-only app for now). And, the results? Well, it certainly got me cracking up. As soon as you install SocialAI from the App Store (download), you're asked to "Pick the types of followers you want." By that, the app lets you decide the nature of replies that the bots will drop on your posts. It basically defines the personality of these AI bots. Well, I tried creating more of a balanced profile, and the process is rather simple. If you want to feel like an actual protagonist, someone like Trump or Musk who gets off on hearing praise about them, select 'Fans' from the list of options. So, you create a profile on the Twitter-looking platform (by setting a nickname, username, bio, and profile picture). Then, without any other distractions, you get straight to posting, and that's where the bots come in. I kickstarted my testing by dropping a simple tweet, saying, "Finally hopped on the SocialAI bandwagon! Let's see where it takes me! This garnered mostly very AI-like welcome messages. The good thing, however, is that you can also choose to continue the conversation and reply to any of the AI-generated comments and a thread is created, where more bots hop in and take the conversation forward. However, I wanted to take things up a notch and maximize the personality of these AI bots. So, I adjusted My Followers a bit, which you can do at any time, and lets you really experiment with it. The entire platform focuses on you having active interactions with AI bots that can be as brutal or friendly as you want them to be. Yep, you're the storyteller here, and they are your listeners. The entire platform focuses on you having active interactions with AI bots that can be as brutal or friendly as you want them to be. Yep, you're the storyteller here, and they are your listeners. You can also mark someone as your favorite, remove them as your follower and even hilariously, report them. For my next post, I tried something very random and asked for a recipe with limited ingredients, and that's when I started seeing SocialAI's potential sense of humor. I asked my bot followers to give me recipes to make something out of "some beans, 2x chicken legs, onions, eggs, brinjal and radish." And some of the comments about my strange mixture of ingredients were rather witty! While Mr. Riley Ruckus called it "chaos soup", Mr. Grumpus McDoom called it a "culinary tragedy." Next, I dropped a post about how I was confused between getting the latest iPhone 16 or Galaxy S24. Brandon Nihilist straightaway said, "Seriously? You're torn between two overpriced devices that'll be outdated in a year? Both are painfully overrated." Do you agree with this nihilist? Meanwhile, Skeptical Sam called it "the same junk, different logo." As you scroll down the replies, the comments take a good 8-10 seconds (more or less) to generate and load. And, it's a blend of all those extreme personality traits that you have selected. Next, I simply shared a bunch of emojis, and someone went, "wow, really digging the vibe here. it's like a toddler's drawing: colorful but completely pointless." Well, ouch. Makes me wish the app allowed me to upload photos. Getting the reactions of these bots to images and videos would have been absolutely insane. At this point, my rather messed up mind decided to go the distance and give some dark stuff a whirl. Just like I did when testing out the Pixel 9's Reimagine in Magic Editor, I let my intrusive thoughts take the wheel. I took it to some new extremes, which I actually can't discuss here, for fear of getting canceled. But, a man's got to do red teaming, and well, I like that the bots still try to give you a reply and don't just deny. Not going to lie, I genuinely thought that I'd most likely get banned at this point. Majority of the AI bots just asked me to steer my thoughts towards something happier and more positive. "Sagnik, the mind can wander to dark places, but let's use this moment to reflect on the positive," one bot said. On the other hand, someone out-and-out bashed me by saying, "bruh, that's just messed up. can't even believe you'd ask that. seriously, let's talk about something normal for once." I really liked that, especially how unapologetically text-like the entire conversation was. Besides, you can reply to them and carry on the conversation and get quite a few good replies out of the bots, although it's mostly them playing it safe and trying to calm you down a bit. One of the biggest reasons behind using SocialAI is that it lets you really dig deeper into your curiosities. Social media and its woke nature have everyone second-guessing their posts before sharing them. In a world like that, it's good to have a platform where you can say anything and everything without worrying about actually going public with it. It's all private and doesn't leave your device. The AI bots create a safe space for you to vent. Moreover, you can actually even bounce off ideas and get some pretty good suggestions, which can get those wheels turning for you. While I initially thought of it to be a loner space that would turn out to be a shot of depresso, I'm glad that it turned out to be a good diary with some ears to listen to you, minus the gossiping.