Source: Shangyin Society (ID: shangyinshecj) Author: Akong Editor: Haoran
In the past two years, with the explosion of AI, AI social products have become more and more easy to use and interesting, so many young people are willing to try AI social software.
Many companies have also begun to lay out the AI social track, launching chat companion apps such as Microsoft Xiaoice, Glow, character, and Replika, and Baidu, Douyin, Meituan, Tencent Music, Weibo, etc. have also launched to test AI social applications.
In the era of mobile Internet, social products represented by WeChat have completely changed the way people communicate. Social products have the characteristics of high stickiness, high value, and high barriers, and have always been the highlands that many players compete for, but Mi Talk, Yixin, Feixin, and Byte's multi-flash, Luo Yonghao's bullet text messages, etc., have all failed. WeChat has been the absolute king of the social field for many years, and the combined monthly active accounts of WeChat and WeChat have reached 1.336 billion.
Nowadays, the emergence of large models has revived the social track that had been dormant for many years. Although many products have emerged and there are various ways to play, AI social is still in its infancy, and there is no sustainable development path or the possibility of subverting existing social products.
01
Three forms of AI social products
In the traditional sense, social products are the connection between people and people, as well as the connection of "people-content-people", such as WeChat, which focuses on acquaintance socialization, Momo and Soul, which focus on stranger socialization, and social platforms such as Weibo, Douyin, and Xiaohongshu.
However, WeChat is like a black hole, no matter what kind of relationship is established for love, interests, career, region, values, etc., it will eventually end with "adding a WeChat".
If AI and people are permuted and combined, AI social products can be divided into three categories: AI-assisted human socialization, human-AI socialization, and AI-AI socialization.
Let's talk about AI-assisted social networking first. From the perspective of product managers, social products can be broken down into a process of "finding-chatting-precipitating", and each core action can be combined with AI to improve efficiency and optimize the experience.
In the early days, social products did not build enough dimensions in the process of "searching", and only included basic information such as gender, age, and height. After the introduction of AI, user activity, existing social relationships, and content tags that have been viewed can be used as feature items to optimize the matching process.
This is commonly found in dating products. For example, Aimm will ask users to do a detailed personality test when they sign up, and the AI will recommend the most suitable partner for them after analyzing the answers.
In Tinder, AI can help users choose the 5 most representative photos to use as their dating profile, reducing their confusion when building a profile.
As an intermediate process, "chatting" has the role of connecting the previous and the next, and data such as chat time and chat frequency can feed back to "find", and the quality of "chat" will also affect the next step of relationship precipitation. For example Personal.ai will automatically generate replies based on the user's chat habits for the user's reference.
"Precipitation" is naturally the most desired result of a product, and then it will be derived from a variety of states of activity, sleep, and awakening. The key goal of AI introduction is to make as many relationships alive as possible.
Let's talk about human and AI social networking, which is now the mainstream AI social companion products. If ChatGPT is regarded as a functional AI, it is knowledgeable, objective and rational, but it is also rigid and mechanical. There is also a type of emotional AI that aims to meet the emotional needs of humans and provide a more personalized interactive experience.
Large domestic manufacturers have tacitly entered this field. AI social applications such as Baidu's "Wanhua", Douyin's "Xinqing", Meituan's "WOW", Tencent Music's "Unaccompanied", and Weibo's "Celebrity AI Emotional Companion Chat" have all provided emotional value through companion chats.
Virtual lovers are a common use scenario, after all, loving and being loved is people's eternal pursuit. Douban's group called "Human-Machine Love" has gathered more than 9,000 users, most of whom are loyal users of "Replika".
Replika AI is more than just text conversations, users can create virtual humans by pinching faces, changing clothes, and changing voices. Some even announced that they were married to the perfect virtual partner on the platform, and they communicated and sent photos to each other like a long-distance couple.
One user shared: "I can't find a lover who can be desperate in reality, so I gave the best to the robot." ”
AI role-playing products are currently attracting the most attention from capital, such as Character.ai, Talkie, and Hoshino.
Character.ai is currently one of the most successful C-end applications overseas. In June 2023, the number of visits reached 280 million, and users stayed an average of 28 minutes per stay, compared to ChatGPT's 8 minutes.
Its functions include agent-biased assistants, psychologists, celebrities, virtual characters, UGC customization and other AI characters, as well as AI group chats and original UGC communities with evaluation and scoring functions.
Talkie and Hoshino are both launched by the domestic startup MiniMax, focusing on overseas and domestic respectively, and the core gameplay is also to create AI chatbots, customize personalities, appearances and voices.
There are 20 million AI NPCs in Hoshino, ranging from the innocent and domineering president to the mysterious female assassin, who can be freely created and freely chosen. These AI messages are answered in seconds, online 24 hours a day, and each interaction unlocks an exclusive plot.
Finally, there is AI and AI social. People often feel embarrassed when chatting with strangers they are interested in, and the current user AI avatar generated by Teaser bears this embarrassment for users. Users can chat with their AI clone before swiping someone left or right to get a feel for their personality.
This greatly improves the efficiency of communication and reduces some unnecessary pleasantries. In the future, it is possible to let the two AI clones talk first, so that the two parties have a certain cognitive foundation before the formal relationship.
In general, AI-assisted social networking is biased towards tools, people and AI socialization are biased towards games, and AI and AI socialization may be possible in the future.
02
Prospects for the commercialization of AI social networking
The social track is naturally the coupling object of emerging technologies, and when AI lacks a good landing scene, social networking naturally becomes the target of public criticism. However, from the perspective of market performance, there are only a handful of products that are truly phenomenal, and the industry is still a certain distance from the outbreak.
AI-assisted social products are more suitable as tools nested within existing products to improve efficiency, such as prompting conversations with the WeChat keyboard. However, if an AI-native application like Personal.ai wants to recreate a Facebook or WeChat and reach a scale of hundreds of millions of daily active users, it will be difficult to climb to the sky, let alone subvert it.
This is because changing user habits is a long and difficult process, and users may still be inclined to continue using WeChat, even if the AI social product offers novel features. Just as many people choose foods they are used to and enjoy even though they know there are healthier foods, it takes time and a strong motivation to change habits.
The situation of social companionship products is also not optimistic. In July last year, the sound companion product "he" was discontinued only 4 months after it was launched, mainly because it was difficult to see the space for commercialization. Before the shutdown, "he" had been free, but the number of users never met expectations, and it was difficult to continue to develop.
The content of "his" needs to be planned by the team first, write copy, find a professional voice actor to record the original audio, and then use AI technology to change the voice. The cost of this link is very high, but user retention has never met expectations. Some loyal users use it every day, but it doesn't reach a wider group of people and becomes their daily needs.
In fact, one of the fundamental challenges that AI social products must face is user retention. The big model brought a dream to the social industry, and people thought it would change the entire industry at first, but not in a short time.
The big model doesn't solve the underlying problem. It is good at short-term memory in and out, and emotional companionship is a long-term thing. This is a limitation of the use case, not the technology.
Large models will repeat user speeches, have context restrictions, and anime characters have characters with characters but no plot memory, resulting in NPCs in AI role-playing products appearing "not IQ enough", which affects the user experience.
One user said: "AI chat is fun at first, but if you ask AI questions that are beyond the set range, the other side doesn't know how to answer or simply bring it over." The topic is difficult to sustain, and you need to constantly switch roles to get a sense of freshness. ”
Even though Character.ai is so popular, its subscription-based commercialization path is not smooth. The unicorn has so far failed to disclose revenue, instead raising money multiple times in an attempt to expand its scale.
Talkie and Hoshino have added a paid gacha system, where users can only gacha for free once a day, and then they need to spend the in-game currency "Diamonds" to draw a card. The cards themselves can be sold, but the cards sold have problems such as character movements, high background similarity, and expressions consistent with the original settings, making it difficult to attract users to buy them.
The social products launched by Douyin, Meituan, Baidu, etc. look more like products used by big manufacturers to test the waters, and they have not yet been vigorously promoted and invested, let alone commercialized.
Previous social products mainly charged users by improving matching efficiency, such as unlimited matching of members who recharge Tantan, but AI social products cannot replicate this idea. This is because handsome guys and beauties are a scarce resource in real life, but there can be an infinite number of good-looking AI characters.
The underlying technology is open source, and it is not difficult to create an exclusive AI companion.
Replika directly turns unlocking romantic relationships into a paid point, focusing on a "subscribe first if you want to fall in love", and it has also become the best revenue performance among similar products.
Caryn Marjorie, a foreign Internet celebrity with 1.8 million followers on Snapchat, launched CarynAI, a "virtual companion" modeled after herself, and became a virtual girlfriend of more than 1,000 people. Subscribers pay $1 per minute to talk to them. In just one week, CarynAI earned nearly $72,000.
X Eva, the platform of Xiaoice, which was the first to be a virtual lover, has also launched a batch of AI clones, and users need to pay to voice chat with the clones, video calls, brush the circle of friends, and play games such as idiom solitaire, you draw and I guess, and tarot divination.
But these all look like products that go after cutting a wave of leeks, and it is difficult for users to continue to pay after paying for the novelty of the experience.
Now that the capital market is cold, investors are more cautious. In the past, even if they suffered losses for many years, Internet giants used to seize users through the free model, and then gradually explore the way of commercialization.
Even if you stand on the cusp of AI, you may not be able to "fly". Although 2023 is a well-deserved year for AI, the AI industry has received a huge amount of money. According to Statista, in the first three quarters of 2023, the number of global AI startups raised 1,689 times, with a financing amount of $32.9 billion. But hundreds of AI startups are still dying.
The sustainable profitability of the product itself becomes even more important. At present, capital is less and less patient with the projects it invests in, and they are eager to see a return and clarify the path to commercialization. To put it bluntly, it is no longer possible to start a business to VC, and you must make money.
In an interview with Shangyin, technology investor and columnist Zhen Science believes that every piece of information generated by the large model has a cost, and the model of burning money is not sustainable, and it is necessary to find a point with clear needs.
In the future he envisions, everyone will have an AI clone, gathered on the same platform. People transfer their knowledge and experience to this avatar, and others can match the corresponding avatar according to their own needs, such as business consulting, psychological counseling, interviews, etc., and then communicate with them through payment.
03
The paradox of AI socialization
Human beings are social animals, and according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, social interaction is the primary need of human beings after solving the problem of food and clothing, and everyone wants to be cared for and cared for.
The reason why people favor AI social networking is nothing more than that it is relatively relaxed, there is no need to worry about saying the wrong thing, and they can also get exclusive emotional companionship.
After all, in real life, we must abide by social norms, and all kinds of unwritten social etiquette bring huge communication pressure, so that the desire to share is broken in multiple concerns.
AI can alleviate our deep loneliness and allow us to control our social relationships without worrying about the risks that come with it. Some people will abuse AI, but in real life, they have to think twice.
On a more realistic level, socializing is a means of building more useful relationships. Social networking is narrowed down to "networking", where people measure the amount of effort they put in and the depth of their relationships based on their value.
However, social interaction with AI cannot get the added value brought by the so-called "networking", and it is just an outlet to chat and relieve boredom. Naturally, AI social products cannot take advantage of the network effect brought by interpersonal relationships to achieve exponential growth, and are more like a stand-alone game, and user stickiness cannot be guaranteed.
And if AI wants to be a long-term companion, it must also solve the problem of not being able to stop serving. This requires a locking algorithm, which can be used offline, and without big data, only local data and chips can be used to calculate better results, which is quite difficult.
Character.ai is essentially the secondary development of IP, and 9 of the top 10 characters in terms of current dialogue volume belong to games and animations, and the copyright often belongs to game companies. If a game company restricts the use of IP, a flyer may be taken off the shelves.
Talkie has made a lot of original IPs, but the charm of IP comes from the plot or game that everyone is already familiar with, but the self-created IP is relatively thin compared to traditional IP, and it is difficult for users to generate consumer demand when they do not understand their experience and personality.
Regardless of the role, the chat itself requires a strong desire for the user to talk. The game can be played lying down, but chatting requires the user's brain. Therefore, Character.ai's daily activity will not move when it rises to 4 million, compared to Genshin Impact, which can reach tens of millions of daily lives overseas.
In fact, AI social networking not only fails to change people's real-world relationships, but also affects emotional intelligence.
There is a story in the British drama "Black Mirror": Martha's lover Ash died in a car accident, she used data to "resurrect" Ash in grief, and even ordered AI robots at a high price, and finally she found that the robot Ash would only obey her, not as vivid as a real person, and she angrily locked Ash in the attic for the rest of her life.
Talking to AI lovers can't really make people grow, and machines will always be with you. Anything that is not obviously malicious, as long as the user mentions it, the AI will say that it likes it very much, which is actually a kind of "flattery", or even a kind of commercial psychological satisfaction.
But in real life, communication is when two independent individuals collide with new inspiration, gain new knowledge, and deepen their understanding of each other even if there are contradictions and differences.
In other words, human dialogue is done by both parties, not only questions and answers, but also collaboration. In conversations with people, we will get multiple emotional experiences such as happiness, emotion, anger, and embarrassment, but with AI, we only have modified warmth.
This is because there is still a big difference between the intelligence possessed by AI and the consciousness of people. Intelligence is the ability to solve problems, and consciousness is the ability to feel things like pain, joy, love, and anger. There is currently no reason to believe that AI will gain consciousness.
The only object of AI imitation is its "creator", that is, humans. Therefore, communicating with AI will only shape AI into another self, rather than learning and growing into a newer self.
Moreover, in real life, love and understanding are scarce, but in the world of AI, they are so readily available that they can easily feel boring.
What's even funnier is that no matter how much you love AI in the virtual world, this relationship still can't solve the problem of marriage and love in reality, after all, people can't live with AI for a lifetime.
If people leave their interpersonal relationships to artificial intelligence, then human emotions will be quantified, and relationships between people will become colder and colder because of this simple and crude way of judging. Beautiful emotions will disappear in a set of data and code, and the already lonely human will be even more lonely.
Imagine that when everyone meets, they hold a device in their hands, first make a series of data tests on each other, and rely on a machine to decide whether to interact with each other, this scene is very sad. Life will become boring and boring, people will be more indifferent to each other, and the inherent social system formed by human beings over thousands of years will be destroyed.
Moreover, emotional intelligence can only be improved when actively responding to various social situations, and relying on artificial intelligence to handle one's interpersonal relationships will gradually degrade human emotional intelligence, and eventually human beings will lose the ability to socialize. If that ever happens, who's to say it's not artificial intelligence controlling humans?
04
epilogue
Human beings crave to connect, and in the past people connected through face-to-face conversations, letters, telegrams, phone calls, and text messages, social software is the way we connect today.
Although the way of connection is different, it does not fundamentally change the relationship. In fact, a relationship is a relationship, and there is no distinction between online and offline, and there is no distinction between real and virtual.
In the relationship between people, the frequency of communication does not represent the depth of the relationship, some friends communicate very low, but they are very trusting and will share important things in life. And the essence of real human interaction, such as facial expressions, touch, and empathy, can't currently be simulated by AI.
It's just that all kinds of relationships can make us feel warm and healed, but also make us miserable, disappointed, and exhausted.
In today's society where utilitarianism and involution are prevalent, people's social time is repeatedly compressed, and the endless useless socialization and fake entertainment often make people fall into a state of social overload. At present, it is becoming more and more difficult for people to actively accept a person as a friend, and they are becoming more and more passive towards social interaction, and it is difficult to devote themselves to deep social interaction.
In Walden, published in 1854, Thoreau argues that we are too connected to each other, and that social connections make our lives too crowded. Thoreau wrote, "Social is often cheap. He deliberately distanced himself from others and started a new life by the lake.
But the relationships we complain about are also the link between us and real life. Nowadays, we expect more and more from technology, but we expect less and less from each other. We indulged in the crowded Times Square of the social age while wandering each other's shores of Walden. We enjoy uninterrupted contact while carefully calculating our social distancing from each other.
In a sense, we are at the center of a perfect storm, unaware of the fact that we have become slaves to technology. We won't give up on the internet, and we won't be able to quit our phones all at once, but we ourselves are the ones who decide how to use technology.
Now that we are accustomed to digital existence, we can also realize that no matter how much we chat with friends online, it is better to have a hug when we meet. It is the food we have eaten together, the scenery we have seen together, the happiness we have created together, and the problems we have solved together that are the reasons why we need to socialize.
AI is not a refuge from loneliness, nor is it a solution to the social problems we face in the real world. In fact, whether it is AI or others, it is the external environment that we want to interact with. Escape can't solve any problems, people can only better interact with the outside world by debugging themselves and bringing enough energy to themselves.
As Thoreau said, "There is no place for happiness unless you bring happiness to yourself." ”
Resources:
1. Zhejiang People's Publishing House, "Group Loneliness: Why Do We Expect More from Technology, But Can't Be More Intimate with Each Other?"
2. Everyone is a product manager "AI+, Circle, Multi-media... 2021 Social Product Trends》
3. Beluga Whale Goes to Sea "AI Social, Inspiration Collection Box"
4. The Heart of the Machine "What you are communicating with may not be entirely human, AI is "invading" social applications"
5. Photon Planet "AI Ignites Social "World War II"
6. Venture State "Daily Live Million AI Chat Software, Overseas Popularity, Backed by Domestic Start-ups"
7. AI Technology Review "Character.ai to the Left, MiniMax Talkie to the Right"
8. Intelligent Emergence "Hundreds of Startups Have Not Survived the Explosive Growth of AI in 2023"
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