Most people remember when ChatGPT was released. This technology introduced a new concept – a chatbot available 24/7 whose sole job was to answer your questions. Since then, ChatGPT has become an integrated part of RE student life, whether it’s for academics or for personal use. Artificial intelligence has become completely normalized.
Now, however, tech companies are racing to incorporate AI wherever they can—and not always in places where it’s useful. AI’s newest frontier lies in the world of social media, ironically meant to be a place where humans interact. The most popular social media apps now have AI features. None of them are good.
So, let’s be clear about one thing: AI has no place in social media, and there are significant drawbacks—even dangers—to incorporating it.
Snapchat was one of the first platforms to add AI features with their introduction of “MyAI,” an interactive chatbot that is fully customizable, from its name to its appearance (known on Snapchat as Bitmojis). Snapchat describes the AI as an “experimental, friendly chatbot” meant to act as a friend who can interact with your messages in a human-like way. Unlike some other AI chatbots, this one can respond to pictures and videos. It can identify certain aspects of pictures you send, listen to voice memos, and even send back AI-generated Snaps.
Most Snapchat users at RE think the tool is completely useless.
“People are not talking with each other anymore,” said Haile Ferrentino ’25. “What are you even interacting with? Pixels? Bots? People need to realize that.” After all, Snapchat was designed as a platform for people to make friends and talk to the ones they already have. Why would they spend their time building a relationship with a friendlier ChatGPT?
Instagram is the newest app to implement AI technology, taking its cues from MyAI. Their new Meta AI is another type of chatbot inside Instagram that makes the Instagram search bar like Google. In my own experience, I’ve never used this tool willingly—only accidentally, as the Meta AI annoyingly lies right in the way of the search bar.
But another unique aspect of their AI implementation is their “AI Studio,” which will allow users free rein in the AI world.
Meta describes their new feature as a platform where “anyone can create an AI character based on their interests, and creators can build an AI extension of themselves.” In its current use, it aims to help influencers in replying to all their fans, whether its common DM questions or story replies, when they usually wouldn’t have the time to do so.
This new feature limits the already small human interaction celebrities/influencers have with their fans. Once they have an AI extension of themselves to answer “simple” questions, what will stop them from using it all the time?
“When you use an AI service to help you out with that, I feel like it’s like cheating the system and you’re exploiting what it means to be on social media,” Lexi Barna ’25 said. “Honestly, I think that it’s lazy, and I just don’t think that it’s the most ethical thing in the world.”
This technology also raises new concerns about the already-problematic dynamics between celebrities and superfans. In a world where people already obsess over parasocial relationships with influencers, what will happen when AI makes them feel like they’re actually building friendships and relationships with their favorite figures?
Social media is a place for so many people to explore their interests, check in on their favorite influencers and trends, and express themselves. With companies scrambling to add the latest technology to their apps, they haven’t thought through what will happen when it spreads unchecked into this vast and hugely influential world.
As Geoffrey A. Fowler of the Washington Post put it, “We the users shouldn’t be treated as guinea pigs for a powerful new technology these companies don’t know how to control. Especially when the guinea pigs are young people.”
These younger audiences themselves have even noticed and acknowledged the negatives of a constant use of artificial intelligence. “Instead of being creative, people will turn to [AI] to take shortcuts and won’t be able to do things on their own,” Julia Russell ’31 expressed.
Meta, we don’t need ChatGPT in our Instagram search bar when we can already access it on every device. Snapchat, we definitely don’t need the AI chatbot on our phone to start Snapping back. And we certainly don’t need AI influencers, who barely have time for their fans as is. With the promise of an AI-filled future looming over us, we’ll be able to access AI at any moment, so let us keep this space for human-only connections and interactions. Social media was already problematic enough when it was only real people. Let’s keep bots out of the equation.
