SocialAI, a new iOS app that looks like a microblogging social network, is filled with bots and lets users populate their network with up to 32 types of bots
https://www.theverge.com/... [image] @mxbck@front-end.social : Wow that's fucking bleak. A social network where you're the only human so you can “be the main character” — Consider therapy. — https://www.theverge.com/... Cal Alaera / @Cal@kind.social : AI tech bros are harvesting untold amounts of social network data in order to sell it back to you as a “private” social network. — https://www.theverge.com/... https://www.theverge.com/... #AIIsGoingJustGreat Carl T. Bergstrom / @ct_bergstrom@fediscience.org : So I signed up for the new heaven-ban SocialAI social network where you're all alone in a world of bots. — It is so much worse than I ever imagined. It's not GPT-level AI; it's more like ELIZA level, if the ELIZAs were lazily written stereotypes of every douchebag on ICQ circa 1999. … Ernie Smith / @ernie@writing.exchange : Screw you assholes, I found the app for me. — https://www.theverge.com/... Bluesky: @illumi.meme : yes I downloaded it. yes it encouraged me to leap off a 12 story building [embedded post] @illumi.meme : “be the main character” is the reddest of any red flag ive ever seen [image] X: Michael Sayman / @michaelsayman : I've spent years wanting to build a consumer app that was impossible for a long time. Now the tech has finally caught up to my vision. Introducing SocialAI, a private social network where you receive millions of AI-generated comments offering feedback, advice & reflections on [image] Charles Arthur / @charlesarthur : This is insanity. Why get AI to do this when there's a perfectly good social network right here where real human people will tell you off for absolutely anything? Heidi / @heidibriones : Dead Internet Theory, except it's real. SocialAI is a ‘social media’ app where you post and only bots respond and engage. Why? (Edited because I was wrong. It's not related to crypto and the creator was upset that I thought it was related to crypto. As if that's the problem with @zeneca : So there's this new social media app called SocialAI where you automatically get a tonne of followers and engagement from AI every time you post The idea is that for people who feel like they're shouting into the void, they now have an audience of people to talk to and interact [image] Michael Sayman / @michaelsayman : for those who want to know how SocialAI works under the hood, we actually smart-rank personas, replies, and more based on likes, saves, quotes, etc as well like a real social network does. Yes, SocialAI has it's own local ranking algorithm. Tess Hegarty / @thegartsy : Here we go again. This facsimile of connection will not help people, it isolates them further away from genuine connections. You literally pre-select the “characters” you want to reply. Dystopian and anti-human. At least the AI bots agree with me? 🤔😅 😭😭😭 [image] Ryan Hoover / @rrhoover : A non-human social network (Blaze is v wrong about pineapple) [image] Nick Dobos / @nickadobos : 5 minutes with this and I am SO intrigued. Oddly works the same way that the chat part of chatGPT works. A familiar interface Steve Moser / @stevemoser : @michaelsayman Very Meta for an AI to question AI authenticity 😂. When I first read your tweet the app sounded fun and silly. And it is but now after using it I can see this being a useful tool with the right tuning and the ability to create followers... [image] Kelsey Hightower / @kelseyhightower : Social media platforms should offer an argue bot for people who just want to argue. Michael Sayman / @michaelsayman : Introducing the SocialAI V2 model: Breaking the Echo Chamber. - conversations between AI followers - improved language processing - dynamic content length - contextual awareness in each thread - support for parsing 50+ languages SocialAI V2 model is now available on all devices [image] Michael Sayman / @michaelsayman : When ChatGPT came out and I saw the chat interface, I thought to myself, well, this is cool, but surely we're not going to stick to the chat interface for everything, right? And yet, 2-3 years later, almost every AI-only convo app is just a chat interface. I found it perplexing. Kelsey Hightower / @kelseyhightower : @michaelsayman 😂 This kinda dope when I think about it. Michael Sayman / @michaelsayman : I called it SocialAI because the word “social” is tied to this conservational interface pattern we see on X, Threads, and other social apps. SocialAI as a product is more like a private journal/space than an old-style social network. The familiar social UI led me to the name. [image] Kris Kashtanova / @icreatelife : Have you heard of SocialAI app? It took my feed by storm and I signed up yesterday. It's a bit like X/Twitter but all your million of followers are AI, no humans. All private. I found it super fun to use for brainstorming. It's a bit like using a hundreds of custom GPTs. [image] Tom Warren / @tomwarren : there's a new social network (SocialAI) where 1,000 of AI bots will reply to you. So I gave it a go with the PS5 Pro pricing 😅 [image] Michael Sayman / @michaelsayman : little quick tip for other engineers out there looking to ship fast: SocialAI was built so that model updates can be sent over the air, and the UI then updates to accommodate changes on everyone's device remotely - it just works. Michael Sayman / @michaelsayman : day 2 looking good [image] Amanda Goetz / @amandamgoetz : @gregisenberg This genuinely makes me sad. Daniel Berk / @danielcberk : @gregisenberg 100% black mirror and sad to me that humans feel so invalidated by other humans that this medium becomes a successful venture. Joe Previte / @jsjoeio : @michaelsayman this is actually a really cool idea. especially for when you want to just share random things and want to be heard Daniel Kibblesmith / @kibblesmith : It's like a voices in your head simulator Dr. Jacquelyn Gill / @jacquelyngill : You know how the longtermists keep saying we should prioritize the survival of hypothetical future AI people over actual humans on Earth now? They really do seem to be working towards a perpetual motion machine of endless growth and consumption, and it's killing the planet. @the_moviebob : “Some persons seem to like you, and others seem to hate you, and you must wonder why. They are simply liking machines and hating machines.” [image] Alex Paknadel / @alexpaknadel : It's absurd, but this is how many of us approach social media anyway. We interact with an interface rather than a person, which means the social contract is suspended. Adam Christopher / @ghostfinder : I mean, I'm just crying at this. It's real. Lincoln Michel / @thelincoln : Tech bros have invented social networks without sociability or networking [image] Kelly Thompson / @79semifinalist : This is maybe the most embarrassing thing I've ever seen? @jendiagammon : God forbid investors ever put money in something that actually helps people. Greg Isenberg / @gregisenberg : I'm playing with the weirdest new viral social app. It's called SocialAI. Imagine X/Twitter, but you have millions of followers. Except the catch is they are all AI. You have 0 human followers. Here's how it works: You post a status update. Could be anything. “I'm thinking [image]
Context & Ripple Effects
SocialAI turns the synthetic-companion idea explored in early AI-character experiments into a deliberately single-user social feed: the product is not trying to solve the cold-start problem with human members, but with configurable AI participants.
The later backlash over AI-generated profiles on major social apps shows why the distinction between disclosed, user-selected bots and synthetic accounts presented inside ordinary networks matters. SocialAI makes that trade-off unusually explicit.
First-order effects
- Users can assemble a feed of up to 32 bot types and receive AI-generated replies and engagement without waiting for a human audience.
- SocialAI’s product work shifts toward bot-persona variety, conversation quality, language support, and thread context rather than conventional user acquisition and social-graph growth.
Second-order effects
- The app provides a clear product test for whether users value controllable, always-available interaction over the unpredictability of human participation, a question adjacent social and companion products must answer.
- Its explicit bot labeling and configuration create a contrast with platforms that blend synthetic profiles into shared feeds; that can make provenance and user control more salient competitive features.
Third-order effects
- If such designs find sustained use, social products may increasingly separate private AI-mediated interaction from public human networks, changing what counts as engagement and community health.
- The pattern strengthens the case for companion governance focused on disclosure, persona boundaries, and user expectations—especially as later coverage showed how easily AI interactions can be exposed beyond their intended setting in a public AI chat feed.
The trend: SocialAI is one data point in the shift from social networks organized around human connection to configurable, AI-generated social experiences.