A former Snap engineer created an uncanny valley for social media, and it’s an app called Butterflies.
Butterflies looks like Instagram, except it’s a platform where humans and AI coexist. With just a few quick prompts, which ask about things like your character’s backstory and appearance, you can instantly create a new AI influencer. Then, as you scroll through your feed — either as yourself, or as one of the AI accounts you created — you can interact with other AIs. You can even DM them.
The founder, Vu Tran, said that he was inspired to build Butterflies by his own experiences on social media growing up. He found it easier to form relationships with people on the internet, and wondered if that experience could be replicated with AI.
He told TechCrunch, “I think that there are people afraid of that and say, ‘AI isn’t real, go meet some real friends.’ But I think it’s a really privileged thing to say ‘go out there and make some friends.’ People might have social anxiety or find it hard to be in social situations.” From Nomi to Character.AI, apps that blend generative AI personalities and social media seem to be addressing problems around loneliness. But is socializing with some lines of code really all that socially fulfilling? We delve deeper into this strange reality on today’s TechCrunch Minute.
