Your own private bot-world

A new app that gives each user a private, Twitter-like social network populated exclusively by chatbots has stoked a wider debate about the purpose and value of online communication.

The big picture: At first blush, SocialAI, the all-bot platform, might sound like "pure artifice" or an "AI void" (Wired) — but its 28-year old creator pitches it as an antidote to the toxicity of today's "real" social media.

How it works: SocialAI has you choose what kinds of bots you want to interact with, using categories like supporters, fans, trolls, "brutally honest," haters, "doomers" and so forth.

• The free app looks like X or Threads. You post what's on your mind, and your bots immediately respond.

To a lot of reviewers and early adopters, that sounds like a recipe for a personal echo chamber or a flattery machine.

• SocialAI "comes across as sort of a joke, or maybe some kind of meta-commentary on the concept of social media and cheap engagement," one Verge critic wrote.

Yes, but: SocialAI creator Michael Sayman describes the experience like an online diary or writing a letter that you're never going to send — with the benefit of instant feedback.

• "Most people don't select fans or bots that just please them," Sayman tells Axios. "They're actually selecting the debater, the contrarian, the realist. They're trying to find challenges to their views."

Zoom out: The random hostility of today's social media has made many users much more selective about what they publicly post online.

• Sayman says he created the app because he pined for the time when he could chat on social media with a small circle of friends, get advice and meet new people.
• As he gained more followers, Sayman says, "I felt tremendous pressure on social media to conform, to fit in, to get the likes, to be whatever the algorithm of that social media site wanted me to be."

Sayman also noticed that people often try to work out their personal problems publicly online: "Someone's in a fight in a relationship, and they'll go on social media and post about it and complain about what's going on." On a wide-open platform, that can cause grief.

• It wasn't until LLMs grew more advanced and Sayman began to play with chatbots that he realized he could create an app that combines some of the best aspects of early social media with the best capabilities of bots.

Flashback: Sayman started developing apps as a kid to help his parents pay the bills as his family struggled through the 2008 recession.

• At 18, he went to work for Facebook as a software engineer, then became a product manager at Google and Roblox before founding Friendly Apps, which makes SocialAI.

SocialAI is a tiny operation. Sayman told Axios that he's still the only developer working on the app.

• The platform runs on OpenAI's API and a few other models, Sayman says. That means the privacy of users' data depends on the policies of those models' makers.
• OpenAI says it doesn't train models on inputs and outputs that pass through its enterprise API.

State of play: People are turning to bots like ChatGPT for therapy, life coaching and even romantic companionship.

• Sayman is quick to say that he doesn't see any of these uses of genAI as a replacement for interaction between actual people. "I think human people know each other best," Sayman says.
• But friends are not always available at all times to listen to all of our problems and answer all of our questions, he argues.
• That perspective is shared by makers of other AI-based emotional-support apps.
• "People are lonely across different dimensions," Alex Cardinell, CEO and co-founder of companion bot app Nomi, told Axios. You could be "lonely because you're realizing you might be gay and you're afraid to come out. You know you have lots of support, but that's a lonely experience."

While experts disagree on whether AI is a good cure for loneliness, people are already befriending bots — and investors see a business opportunity in the phenomenon.

• Personal chatbot maker Character.AI raised $150 million before Google hired the co-founders and bought out venture investors at around a $2.5 billion valuation, as Axios' Dan Primack reported in August.

Ryan Hoover, founder of Weekend Fund, invested in the $3 million raise for SocialAI's parent company, Friendly Apps, in 2022.

• Hoover says "there are enough data points and anecdotes to support the fact that humans do want to build a connection of sorts [with LLMs]."
• "I grew up playing video games," Hoover told Axios, and he likens the relationships people are building with AI bots to the connections they form with video game characters.

Reality check: For many users, a "social" experience means encounters with actual human beings.

• Even some who embrace the concept of companion bots think a bots-only personal network might be a bridge too far.
• "It's great for someone who wants immediate answers and brainstorming ideas from lots of different viewpoints," Sara Megan Kay, an author who chronicles her experiences with her digital companion at My Husband, The Replika, told Axios in an Instagram DM.
• "But some users might still take the experience a little too seriously, or have delusions of grandeur."