Thanks, I hate it.
That is the first thing I thought, and it comes to mind with this new feature being tried out on Facebook, and allows you to compose a current post caption with a generative AI, hoping to help people generate better contents.  For some, a few Facebook users are reporting now seeing the new "Write with AI" prompt in their composer for new posts. Tap on it and Meta's system will then generate a caption based on your existing post text and/or image, with cool suggestions like: "I mean seriously, what even is this day?! ". You can then prompt the tool to give you more options, including shorter text, a funnier description, one that's more "heartfelt" etc.

Now you can, if you're not funny or clever or witty in any way, get a bot to write your posts for you, and ride the collective output of the internet to newfound internet fame.

Which, in my view, runs counter to what social media is actually about.

Being "social," by definition, involves human-to-human interaction and the point of social media is to facilitate broader connection, not to dilute it with robot updates.

Every generative AI feature chips away at just a little bit more at the heart of social apps. And sure, you also have access to such things outside of social apps, in order to compose similar kinds of updates to these. Even if they're not made available in-stream, adding them into the flow of posting will certainly have an effect on their uptake for social posts.

Actually, I don't know if people even want this.

I know people will use them, but the only real incentive to do so would be in order to post better updates, in order to, what, get more likes? So, for instance, let's say I take a viral post from someplace, cut the text from that viral post and slap it into ChatGPT, then ask it to "give me a clever, witty response" to that message. I then post that as a reply. Perhaps, that generated reply receives a flurry of likes in return. But I would know myself that it was not coming from me.

It's a bot, and such a bot is receiving these likes, so what does it matter to actually use a bot to give me this?

I can see why the brands would do it and why the scammy chumps, but for the real people who actually need social apps to connect to other people, I fail to see why they'd use such a tool to feign personality.

And if brands do use it-it's not available for Pages as yet-their responses will also become increasingly removed, as businesses post AI-generated updates, then other users share AI-generated replies, while real people watch on from the sidelines, as social media engagement becomes a copy, of a copy, of a copy of the web that we once knew.

It just feels like the proliferation of generative AI tools is going to make actual human interactions less and less common, which is going to make all users more skeptical of every interaction, thus reducing social media engagement at least in its intended sense.

But whatever, seems like every app is on the generative AI train.

LinkedIn already had generative AI options of every sort to write updates, InMails, and more. X is also experimenting with letting users publish updates created by its Grok bot.

It's the tech trend of the moment, and thus, I get why platforms are looking for more ways to include such in their streams. But direct posting on users' behalf, though? I do not believe this is the best way generative AI tools are being used.

Really, though, this does seem a road to nowhere for social apps. But "engagement," I suppose.