Written by Intern: Zhengyuan Liu

By now, in 2023, it's safe to assume that AI's impact on social media has likely evolved even further than ever. Here are some ways AI has been helping social media:

To start off with the basics, which social media companies have been using for years, algorithms accompanied by AI can enhance content recommendation. AI algorithms analyze user behavior, preferences, and interactions to recommend personalized content on users' feeds. This keeps users engaged and encourages them to spend more time on the platform.

While keeping feeding the right posts for the users, AI is also filtering out the inappropriate ones as well, which is called content moderation. Social media platforms utilize AI to detect and remove harmful, inappropriate, or offensive content, including hate speech, spam, and graphic material. AI-based content moderation systems can significantly improve platform safety and help in maintaining community guidelines.

With that being said, AI is also capable of identifying and flagging potentially misleading or false information, supporting efforts to combat the spread of fake news on social media platforms.

Aside from detecting texts, AI also helps censor images and videos, due to its great image and video recognition abilities. AI-powered algorithms can identify objects, faces, and locations in images and videos, enabling features like automatic tagging, content suggestions, and accessibility improvements.

You may ask, well, these are all that we have had in the days without AI, although AI does seem to help enhance it; however, there is no groundbreaking development brought by AI! In fact, there are many ways to prove that idea wrong.

On top of analyzing the post itself, AI is able to analyze posts, comments, and other interactions to gauge the sentiment of users toward specific topics or products. This information is valuable for businesses to understand public opinion and make data-driven decisions. There are applications for using AI to analyze the audience’s mood at the concert, so the performers will know how to engage better. This sentiment analysis ability is definitely making a difference.

Analyzing the internet will generate a huge database for AI to learn. As a result, AI can help users to produce, with its content creation and editing ability. AI tools can aid in content creation, such as generating captions, suggesting hashtags, or editing images to improve their quality before posting. Remember, these can all be done by AI to your liking at just one click!

It's important to note that while AI brings various benefits to social media, there are also concerns about privacy, algorithmic bias, and the potential for AI to reinforce echo chambers or manipulate user behavior. As technology continues to advance, it's crucial to strike a balance between the positive aspects of AI in social media and addressing its potential drawbacks. Overall, AI can help social media platforms provide a more tailored and seamless experience for users, ultimately increasing user satisfaction and retention.