Two Yale students were recently in the news for creating an AI-powered social network called Series while in Chicago, one of the cofounders of Bonobos has already launched a social app named “Pie” that relies on artificial intelligence to create real-world connections. Both are a clear indication of the growing influence of AI in the world of social networking, which leads to the question: Can AI help to energize a sector that seems to be a bit stagnating? Well, a company from China, Soul App, has the answer to that one.
With Meta’s recent $14 billion bet on AI through the company’s acquisition of Scale AI, it’s obvious that social networking platforms are falling over each other to harness the power of artificial intelligence. And, here is the thing, this seems to be a two-way street because foundational AI companies are just as keen on entering the social networking arena.
So, can it be concluded that AI and social networking are a match made in heaven? Well, for almost a decade now, Soul App has proved that this happy union can go a long way in attracting new users as well as holding on to existing users.
The social networking app, which is extremely popular among China’s Gen Z, started using AI since its launch in 2016. The platform’s proprietary “Lingxi Engine” was its first foray into the world of artificial intelligence. Lingxi was exclusively designed to facilitate user connections based on mutual interests.
On the platform, AI’s primary function was to identify potential affinities and introduce users to others who shared their passions. In turn, this fostered organic conversations and group formation. Unlike other social networking platforms, Soul turned its back on creating networks on the basis of facial appearance.
To this day, users on Soul still use avatars instead of self-portraits. This combination of privacy by design and deep engagement through technology has managed to draw in the users for Soul App. Currently, the social networking platform enjoys a mammoth user base of almost 30 million monthly active users.
So, it comes as no surprise that the founders of Series and Pie decided to borrow a few pages from this AI playbook. But, there are notable differences in how Soul uses AI vis-à-vis these two newcomers.
The end goal for both Series and Pie is to use AI for creating online contacts that can eventually be taken offline. In contrast, the connections made on Soul App can stay on the platform for a long time unless users choose otherwise.
So what keeps Soul’s users engaged with the platform? As far as we know, Soul’s AI persons are all about creating on-platform connections and facilitating interactions. In fact, Soul endeavors to create a community where human users and AI agents coexist and interact.
For instance, Soul App’s AI agents can independently post updates and comment on human users’ posts. Also, these AI agents can assist users in initiating conversations and engage directly with users for a heart-to-heart.
In contrast, Meta’s AI can engage in direct interactions, answer questions much like an AI-powered search engine as well as help in content creation. So, a simplistic take on these two would be that while Meta AI is a friendly assistant, Soul’s AI is a friend.
But why has AI become so important in the world of social networking? In these days, users crave deeper connections, even if they are not rooted in offline networks, AI does a grand job of making sense of data that can be used to predict accurate matches.
Moreover, the general sentiment towards AI and virtual persons has turned notably positive. There was a time when youngsters were guardedly curious about artificial intelligence, but now they are outright enamored by the technology.
Youngsters all over the world are keen on befriending AI beings; what’s more, digital beings are giving top influencers a run for their money. Recently, Luo Yonghao, a popular Chinese livestreamer, revealed that he netted a whopping $7.65 million by using a digital avatar for a live stream, which was more than what was raked in when he played the host.
And this is understandable! According to Bloomberg, trust in AI is growing rapidly, and it is particularly strong in China. In a nutshell, it would be safe to suggest that we are squarely in the age of AI. So, chances are that social networking platforms that use AI will perform well in the future.
As far as Soul App is concerned, the platform is feverishly honing its AI abilities. Soul just upgraded its self-developed, end-to-end full-duplex voice call model. Redefining “full-duplex”, the new model abandons traditional concepts like “VAD (Voice Activity Detection, commonly used to detect speech start/end)” and “latency”, breaking away from the industry-standard “turn-by-turn” interaction pattern, making AI interactions more “human-like”, and delivering an immersive, lifelike voice experience.
Given these steady strides towards AI feature advancements, the platform will likely continue to enjoy the patronage of China’s Gen Z.
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