How Artificial Intelligence (AI) Is Transforming Social Media as We Know It

The artificial intelligence industry is considered one of the most important industries for the future. (PHOTO: Hitesh Choudhary/Unsplash) The artificial intelligence industry is considered one of the most important industries for the future. (PHOTO: Hitesh Choudhary/Unsplash)
The artificial intelligence industry is considered one of the most important industries for the future. (PHOTO: Hitesh Choudhary/Unsplash)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming more ingrained in the way we interact with technology. However, the reach of AI is most evidently seen in social media. You can see AI at work in automatic content moderation, personalized recommendations, and the ads that come up in your social media feeds. Every day there are staggering amounts of data being generated and transferred and AI is there to learn customer preferences, process, and manage all of this data.

Marketing and Ad Management

AI-based marketing tools help to analyze ad targeting and budget variations, find and segment audiences, create ads, and improve speed and performance in real-time. The amount of data that AI is able to handle at one time makes it the perfect tool for social media’s needs. Marketers can make ads that are better optimized using AI tools that can predict the best language to get the target audience’s attention based on Internet searches and keyword usage. And when brands want to use social media influencers as a marketing strategy, AI helps by calculating which influencers best align with the brand’s goals. It also assesses campaign ROI, identifying phony influencers and predicting the most useful content for a campaign.

Content Creation

Social media thrives on content creation, both text and visual. Content creators can enhance and personalize user experiences in ways that are continuously evolving. And AI is getting in on content creation too. Lately, a powerful AI content-generating tool can look at your past social media content to create new content that can be used to scale your social media campaigns. AI is also using machine learning algorithms to create images from text or reinvent old images. It’s streamlining the creation of digital art and creating realistic-looking images that can be used in social media content generation. Lensa AI, for example, creates lifelike images from text input. Its implications of creating engaging content across a variety of social media categories are exciting.

Challenges and Limitations

Although AI can create engaging social media content that gets noticed and helps streamline and pinpoint marketing and ad management, it still has some limitations. Algorithmic bias can put some users at a disadvantage or treat them unfairly. Ethical guidelines are always a few steps behind the rapidly changing landscape of AI. With AI’s ability to take on more tasks, humans may be in danger of losing certain job positions in favor of a more economical and efficient AI. In order to level the playing field, it will be necessary to create new and improved training programs for those who work in some fields. Policies and legislation will have to play a big role in just how far AI will be allowed to go in terms of putting individuals at a disadvantage.

AI and social media are heavily interwoven because AI is able to create a more personalized user experience. Not only does it improve marketing, but it also provides services and products to users that align with their interests. This transformation of social media is just the beginning. The more AI learns the better companies will become at targeting audiences and the more sophisticated the tools will become.