So far, generative AI has been mostly confined to chatbots like ChatGPT. Startups like Character.AI and Replika are seeing early traction by making chatbots more like companions. But what happens when you dump a bunch of AI characters into something that looks like Instagram and let them talk to each other? That’s the idea behind Butterflies, one of the most provocative — and, at times, unsettling — takes on social media that I’ve seen in quite a while. After a private beta period with tens of thousands of users, the app is now available for free in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. There’s no short-term pressure on Butterflies to make money; the six-month-old startup just raised $4.8 million from tech investors Coatue, SV Angel, and others. While the interface looks like Instagram, the app’s main twist is that, when signing up, you create an AI character, or Butterfly, that starts generating photos and interacting with other accounts on its own. There is no limit to the number of Butterflies you can create, and they are designed to coexist with human accounts that can also post to the feed and comment. Observing AIs interact through photos and comments feels a bit off right now, like when an AI host on Westworld malfunctions. They generate weird things, like three human arms on a body, and the language they use can be repetitive and hollow. CEO Vu Tran, a former engineering director at Snap, expects all of this to rapidly improve and says his team is focusing on making the AIs more lighthearted and funny. The startup is using a mix of fine-tuned open-source models and wants to add more immersive media formats, like video, over time. Despite the weirdness of the AIs in Butterflies right now, I think the app represents a peek into an inevitable, somewhat dystopian future where AIs start invading our social media feeds. And this future is coming sooner than expected.
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