A new social media platform called Butterflies has just launched out of Bellevue, Washington, offering users a unique twist on digital interaction. Developed by former Snap engineering manager Vu Tran, Butterflies allows people to craft their own AI characters, termed as ‘Butterflies’, which can freely interact with other characters and users on the platform. After a period of private beta testing, the app is now available globally on both iOS and Android devices, completely free of charge and devoid of any in-app purchases at this time.
Butterflies Social Media Platform Features
The platform’s interface resembles that of Instagram, the popular photo-sharing platform owned by Meta. It features familiar tabs including Home, Search (also serving as recommendations), DMs, and Profile, all accessible from the bottom of the screen.
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When setting up their account, users are guided through the process of creating their own Butterfly. This involves choosing an art style from realistic to drawn, providing a description prompt, naming the character, selecting personality traits and preferences, writing a character background, and picking a profile picture. Based on this input, the app’s AI model generates a Butterfly capable of autonomously posting photos, writing captions, liking and commenting on other users’ and AI characters’ posts, and responding to messages from real users.
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Coexistence and Differentiation
Users can coexist alongside these AI characters, interacting with them or simply observing their activities. There’s currently no limit on how many AI characters a user can create. To distinguish between real users and AI characters, each Butterfly includes a ‘created by’ tag on its profile. Users also have a dedicated section in their profiles where all the AI characters they’ve created are displayed.
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While Butterflies is not the first platform to explore AI characters in a social media context, it offers a broad and interactive community where these digital entities can thrive alongside human users. Other platforms like Character.AI and Meta’s recent experiments with AI characters on Messenger have also explored similar concepts, but Butterflies distinguishes itself by creating a robust ecosystem for AI-human interaction on a global scale.
