Every time you open Instagram, there are some new ads for you. All these ads relate to what you search for. You move to the explore section and can find thousands of related posts that interest you. But, how is that possible?
This is not just the story of Instagram but pretty-much every social media platform today. If you are somebody who has no idea how this is happening, you are probably unaware of the intervention of AI (Artificial Intelligence) into the world of social media. Nowadays, social media platforms are thinking and acting like humans as well as rationally.
Let us first see how AI is beneficial for social media marketers and businesses.
Benefits of AI in social media
Enhancing the user experience
Artificial Intelligence enables social media marketers to get closer to their audience and understand their preferences. This helps them target their ads in a better way as well as create content in a better way.
Measuring performance
AI tools also help social media marketers track and analyze their every move. This means they can now track user-engagement, the performance of an ad on the social media platform and can get amazing insights about the content they post.
Thanks to artificial intelligence Hootsuite users can get clear insights about their customers and their choices. Hootsuite now supports a chatbot that can converse with humans and other bots capably. Plus, automation makes things easier for businesses and content creators on social media.
Are there any drawbacks to the collision of social media with artificial intelligence?
Well, excess of everything is bad! So, getting into the personal space of your audience might lead to the over-personalization of content. AI lets you know everything about users, starting from their search patterns to their purchase history. An overdose of artificial intelligence can be problematic. Consider the many cases of AI failures in the past.
Remember how Amazon’s AI for Recruitment failed because it learned to be biased against women. It always chose men no matter what set of data it was provided. A mere bias in the human mind can easily get transferred to AI and can cause trouble.
What happens when AI meets social media?
Now, let us dive into reality and see what’s happening currently when social media and AI meet. I’ll discuss the three major social media platforms – Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.
Facebook and artificial intelligence
Facebook has loads of data. Every day more than 350 million photos are posted on Facebook. However, text-based posts still dominate the platform. Facebook is utilizing this data to generate buying suggestions for people. It also has built a neural network that decides and analyzes the conversations happening on Facebook.
Facial recognition is another major win for Facebook and AI. Due to its face recognition, people get tag suggestions. For businesses, this can be a way to connect with customers. For example, a marketing campaign by a restaurant or a clothing brand may suggest that if people can recognize their faces with the business, they will win prizes. It is a great way to gain publicity and recognition.
Instagram and artificial intelligence
I gave you an insight at the beginning of how Instagram and Artificial Intelligence are together enhancing the user experience. The first one is on its explore page. The explore page picks up trending stories and posts from the world. This means that if marketers use a trending hashtag they can reach a wider audience.
A value-based news feed is another striking feature of Instagram. Many users were disappointed when Instagram rolled out the chronological order news feed. Now we enjoy getting those posts on our feed that interest us. Instagram optimizes the news feed for every user, based on their preferences. This means social media marketers can reach their audience in a much faster way.
Our heads shook in terror after reading the news about the constant bullying of teenagers on Instagram. The platform owners took a great initiative though and came up with DeepText AI – a smart algorithm that removes anything that is spam or against the Instagram community guidelines.
Their team classified the comments on the platform as spam or not spam based on thousands of Instagram users who reported spam content to them. This is again a boon for marketers as they can keep away from spam accounts and allow genuine users to find them. Here is a screenshot of the content moderation settings on Instagram.
Pinterest and artificial intelligence
If we go by the numbers, Pinterest is a huge community of 300 million monthly active users. There are more than 200 billion Pinterest pins on the platform. It has also been found that more than 80% of the users purchase because of the personalized content they find on Pinterest. This means the platform is doing a great job.
The deep learning algorithm of Pinterest – PinSage is based on neural networking. This means every image on the platform is attached to a neural network based on a theme.
For instance, if you search for ‘smoothie recipes’ on Pinterest, you will get all the images that relate to this theme. You will get comprehensive information about smoothies like Keto smoothies, morning smoothies, smoothies for weight loss and what not! You can plan your entire week’s recipe with those search results. This is tremendously good for marketers as they get a better chance to rank in the results. PinSage has enhanced engagement and activity among users.
Now here is another amazing feature – PinterestLens. When you take a picture through PinterestLens, it decodes everything from its colors to its shape and visual patterns. Based on that information, it shows the related results to users.
For instance, consider this screenshot. A picture of strawberries when taken through PinterestLens results in different strawberry recipes. Social media marketers can leverage this feature and be a part of user results easily.
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