Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

If it had been ten years ago, in an era without AI, someone asked, "how far is social intelligence from our lives?" We can only use the attitude of the future to examine, in the era of underdeveloped network, everyone is an isolated island, we look forward to one day through a simple and convenient way to close the distance between people.

According to a research report released by Ai Media data at the end of 2019, the penetration rate of online social media in China has reached 97%. Chinese consumers spend an average of nearly 4 hours a day on their mobile phones, and online social media spend an average of more than 2.3 hours.

With such a large number of users, it is unrealistic for social platforms to rely solely on manual background services, so we need the help of AI technology.

AI invades the society.

Nowadays, with the development of AI technology, social networks connect everyone as a whole, but at the same time, it is becoming more and more intelligent. AI has penetrated into all aspects of social communication, and we may have the shadow of AI behind every social behavior on the network.

The intrusion of 1.AI into communication scenarios

Imagine that you receive a voice message as long as 60s, but you are in a very noisy environment, or you need to know the voice content for a variety of reasons when it is inconvenient to listen to it. What do you want most at this time? Perhaps most people's answer is "voice to text".

The emergence of Wechat AI speech recognition technology has successfully resolved the pain point of "voice harassment". Speech recognition technology also includes speech to text, speech and text translation, recording file recognition and so on. Behind these convenient functions is Wechat AI language recognition technology developed by ourselves based on deep learning theory, and this technology can also be used to recognize and translate different languages in different scenes.

The original intention of intelligent social networking is to optimize the function of the product and enhance the user experience, so as to improve user satisfaction with the product. Language recognition technology has successfully lowered the threshold for users from different countries and languages to communicate, making communication easier. With the development of the digital age, "AI+ socializing" may become a common trend, and the functions will be more and more diverse.

2.AI intrusion into matching scenarios

Unlike Wechat's focused acquaintance social scene, SOUL APP belongs to the social domain of strangers. AI is like an intermediary. It connects all users and puts each user's information in a data container. When the user launches the match button, AI will find the person who is doing the same thing from the huge data, match the tag information, and recommend the person with the best match to each other.

The application of AI technology in stranger social software solves the problem of efficiency. On the one hand, it saves the cost of making friends, improves the user experience according to the intelligent matching style, and helps to increase the stickiness of users to the product. On the other hand, AI technology helps social software to subdivide user needs and establish different user portraits. Intelligent subdivision helps social software to reduce the difficulty of data collection. Products can develop more functions according to different user profiles.

3.AI 's subversion of the way products are played

Do you still remember the AI face-changing software "ZAO" that became popular overnight? On ZAO, users only need to do simple face recognition and can change faces with one click without shooting video. The simple operation depends on the huge database and AI algorithm.

Behind the explosion of "AI changing face", what the author sees is a brave attempt of AI technology from "specialization" to "civilian". On the one hand, AI technology satisfies users' curiosity about technology, enriches the entertainment of social software, lets users experience the fun brought by AI technology, and laments that AI can still play like this! On the other hand, AI gives companies enough imagination in the development of social functions, and perhaps in the future, more "popular styles" will emerge when professional technologies are reasonably simplified and applied to social software.

Intelligent social interaction is not perfect.

Today's social software can not do without the support of AI technology, but as AI technology is more and more widely used in the field of social software, it also gives rise to a variety of problems.

1. The threshold is too high. Today is the digital age, many social products are developing towards the direction of intelligence, social software is no exception, the development of AI technology is related to the future of enterprises.

For example, Tencent AI Lab Laboratory, founded by Tencent, currently has 70 world-class scientists and more than 300 experienced application engineers in China and the United States. Tencent's financial report in 2019 shows that its expenditure on research and development is 30.387 billion yuan, which shows that the exploration of technology not only requires a strong technical team, but also requires a high amount of capital investment.

Ordinary enterprises are different, on the one hand, they will face huge capital and talent costs. If ordinary enterprises only do social work and lack the support of AI technology, they may face the outcome of being eliminated by the market. But the cost of AI technology is too high and unbearable.

On the other hand, competing with capital-rich giants is like snatching food from a tiger, which is too risky. This has led to a monopoly that the social industry is almost divided by social software giants such as Tencent and Momo. At present, the market threshold of "AI+ Social" is so high that only social software giants can afford it.

two。 Lack of reasonable realization mode. The application field of AI technology is very extensive. The ultimate goal of enterprises' high investment in AI technology is to make money. For example, products such as Tmall Elf and Xiao Ai Audio empower products through AI technology to make products have higher added value and higher realization efficiency. However, this is not the case when AI technology is applied to social software.

Social software is different from other physical products, social software can not achieve the purpose of realization by selling the product itself. Whether it is Wechat's "voice recognition function" technology or SOUL's intelligent matching technology, the purpose is to provide users with a good experience. The application of AI technology in social products tends to be "free" and lacks a suitable business model.

3. Moral and legal risks. The explosion of ZAO has expanded the way social software is played by the citizenization of AI technology, and it also makes people imagine whether AI technology can dominate social communication. But shortly after the explosion, ZAO was removed from the shelves because of issues such as infringement and privacy that hit the red line of the law, and it was not as hot as it used to be after it was back online.

From the author's point of view, the core of "AI+ social" is still social, and the main reason for the rapid decline of ZAO popularity, in addition to legal factors, is that the social software dominated by AI is single and lacks ecological support, which is more like a simple tool, which makes it difficult to generate continuous social desire.

On the one hand, "AI face change" quickly attracts users' curiosity with lower barriers to using technology, but content sharing also needs to be carried out on other social platforms such as Wechat and Weibo, which is very troublesome for users. On the other hand, users have limited attention to new things and will leave once they are tired of playing, and the user traffic of social software dominated by AI technology comes and loses quickly.

Opportunities and "minefields" for intelligent social interaction

AI technology is an inescapable social theme, but in order to develop in a better direction, it needs to be more perfect to avoid the "minefield" and find more opportunities at the same time.

First of all, smart social networking needs to avoid "minefields" that are not led by users.

For one thing, AI social needs to always be good for users. At present, the social development of AI technology has become more and more mature, and there are strong financial resources behind social software. With the deepening of intelligent exploration, social giants will only invest more and more in AI technology. The situation that giants such as Wechat and Momo monopolize the intelligent social software market may continue. More intelligent social software is a good thing for users.

Second, the design of products should not focus on technology rather than rules. Although the technology is innocent, the openness of "AI face changing + social networking" conflicts with face recognition payment or portrait, privacy and other private attributes, which will affect the development life of social software. If you can not win the trust of users, it may bury hidden dangers to the long-term development of the product. Moreover, other companies with the ability to do "AI+ social" are expected to reconsider the question of who is dominant in "AI+ social" in the light of ZAO's experience.

Second, smart social networking still has a lot of potential to tap.

First, use AI to drive deep social interaction. The ultimate goal of socializing with strangers is to build acquaintances. SOUL and ZAO can't watch users lose to Wechat or other deep social software. Products need to increase user stickiness in order to better develop. So it can be predicted that SOUL and ZAO may add more deep social features to retain users in the future, and guide users to deeply social on their products with the help of user portraits created through AI technology.

Second, use the technical genes of AI to drive social realization. In the face of the wave of 5G, the next step of "AI+ Social" needs to consider how to find a new breakthrough under the 5G tuyere. Intelligent social integration with 5G technology may be an important development direction. When the social products of enterprises are more and more consistent with the needs of consumers, the products have more potential for development. The boundaries of intelligent social products are constantly being expanded. Maybe we can find a business model that fits.

Through the above analysis of advantages and disadvantages, the mode of "AI+ social" has penetrated into all aspects of social communication. Intelligent social communication not only reduces the cost of communication, but also makes social communication more convenient. However, only by dealing with the problems that arise, can intelligent social communication develop in a more diversified direction. Although the commercial prospect of "AI+ Social" is not clear at present, there is still a long way to go, which is worth looking forward to.

(official account of Liu Kuang / tr. by Phil Newell) ID:liukuang110

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