Social media has become an indispensable part of our lives. Over 4.5 billion people around the world now use social platforms to stay connected, get entertained, and consume news. As social networks continue to grow, artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how we experience and interact on these platforms.

AI is enabling more personalized and immersive social experiences while also helping tackle many of the issues plaguing social platforms today, such as misinformation, toxicity, and overload. Social media companies are increasingly integrating AI algorithms and tools on their platforms to enhance the user experience and optimize their business.

Key Takeaways:

• AI powers content recommendations and filters on social media platforms to create personalized user experiences.
• AI is used to moderate content and detect misinformation, abuse, and inappropriate material on social networks.
• AI chatbots and virtual assistants allow brands to automate social media customer service and engagement.
• Companies are using AI to analyze social data for audience insights and to optimize paid social campaigns.
• Influencers and everyday users leverage AI tools to enhance photos and videos and assist with content creation.

Recommending Relevant Content

One of the most common applications of AI in social media is recommending relevant and interesting posts, profiles, and groups to users. When you log into Instagram or Facebook, the content you immediately see on your feed or homepage has likely been picked just for you by AI recommendation engines.

AI analyzes your past behavior and preferences on the platform to understand your interests. It then seeks out new posts and profiles you might like and shows them to you. This personalizes social media and allows users to discover novel content and accounts without having to search for them.

For example, TikTok’s AI recommendation engine is considered one of the most advanced. It quickly learns viewer preferences through their engagement with videos and recommends highly relevant and entertaining content to keep users glued to the app. This fuelled TikTok’s rapid growth, especially during the pandemic.

“TikTok has one of the most powerful content recommendation engines among social media platforms today. Its AI looks at every aspect of a video to recommend content that users will find engaging and addictive to watch,” notes a DotSnel article.

Similarly, Twitter’s algorithms track the types of accounts and topics users frequently interact with and add related tweets to their feed. This creates a personalized, curated feed catered to specific interests versus just showing every single tweet chronologically.

Detecting Harmful Content

AI is also being used to detect and take down harmful content like misinformation, abuse, and violent or explicit material that violate platforms’ policies. Social networks generate a tremendous amount of posts, photos, and videos every second. It is impossible for human moderators alone to evaluate all this content efficiently.

“AI-powered moderation is enabling social platforms to remove policy-violating material at scale. Facebook takes down more than 1 million attempts to create fake accounts daily, most detected before they are even active, thanks to AI,” highlights a MIT Technology Review article.

The machine learning algorithms are trained on large datasets of examples of harmful posts. They learn to recognize patterns and cues in new content and flag any that could be violating. AI assists human moderators and prioritizes what they should evaluate manually versus what can be automatically removed.

This allows social networks to respond much quicker to take down harmful material before too many users get exposed. However, AI content moderation is imperfect and still produces errors that impact free speech. Platforms are working to balance safety with openness through transparency, outside oversight, and appeals systems.

Engaging Users With Chatbots

Social media platforms and brands can engage users at scale while providing personalized support through AI chatbots and virtual assistants.

For example, Sephora’s chatbot on Facebook Messenger helps users get beauty product recommendations just by texting their inquiries. The AI asks questions to understand skin type, needs, and preferences before suggesting products.

“Chatbots allow brands to provide customized advice and content to social media users at all hours of the day without human effort. An Oracle survey found 80% of users are receptive to interacting with bots,” the Washington Post reports.

Chatbots also enable brands to automate handling of common social media support queries. Users can get standard issues resolved without waiting for human agents. The AI handles routine requests while escalating complex ones to the support team.

Social listening bots that use natural language processing can also parse through online conversations on social media to gather real-time insights. They analyze customer sentiment around a brand or recent campaign. The AI delivers data like top discussion topics, influencer analysis, and emerging trends that marketers can act on.

Optimizing Paid Marketing Campaigns

AI is helping social media marketers run more optimized paid advertising campaigns on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok.

Sophisticated algorithms can now automatically execute core tasks that used to require manual work:

• Analyzing campaign performance data to identify the best high converting audience segments and ad creatives.
• Dynamically bidding on auctions to show ads to users most likely to take desired actions, like clicks or purchases.
• Rapidly iterating ad images and texts to improve engagement at scale through AI copywriting and creative generation.

“AI takes away the grunt work for marketers so they can focus on strategy and innovation. It enables agile optimization at a pace and scale exceeding human abilities,” notes marketing thought leader Neil Patel.

For instance, Persado is an AI writing platform that improves the performance of social ad campaigns by generating emotionally intelligent, personalized creative copy targeted to different personas.

Top digital agencies like Digitas are applying AI to social strategy and seeing significant lifts. AI is helping brands maximize their budget on paid social campaigns and reach the right consumers.

Enhancing Photos and Videos

AI creative tools are allowing everyday social media users to enhance their visual content without professional skills. For instance, Adobe’s suite of AI-powered editing apps like Lightroom and Photoshop Camera has features like blemish removal, auto re-composition, and style transfer.

These make it easy for anyone to quickly edit photos and get professional effects, customized to their brand and aesthetic. AI can also generate captivating social video ads, analyze performance, and suggest optimizations.

“AI editing apps like FaceTune and theirs have become essential for many influencers and content creators looking to enhance their social content,” notes tech publication The Verge.

AI is additionally helping design realistic virtual avatars, digital spaces and environments for social media that are revolutionizing engagement.

For example, Snapchat’s augmented reality lenses powered by AI allow users to digitally try on products like clothes and makeup. Social commerce is being disrupted by virtual fitting experiences. AI is also producing lifelike virtual influencers who look and act like real humans without human effort behind them.

Lil Miquela partnered with major brands like Prada and had over 3 million Instagram followers at her peak. As AI creativity enhances, we will live more of our social lives in hybrid digital-physical worlds.

The Future With AI

AI is undeniably transforming social media platforms, brands, and user experiences. As the technology continues advancing, AI will enable more automated moderation to maintain safety, provide immersive AR/VR experiences, and deliver increasingly relevant recommendations and custom ads to individuals.

However, critics argue AI could also enable manipulation of users and increased polarization as platforms drive addiction. Social networks must implement AI transparently and ethically, giving users control over their data and preferences. If harnessed responsibly, AI can positively transform social media into machines that connect humanity and spread knowledge, compassion and innovation.