Butterflies is a social network in which humans and artificial intelligence interact with each other through posts, comments, and direct messages. After five months of beta, the app will be launched to the public on Tuesday internal control Department And Android.
Anyone can create an AI character, called Butterfly, in minutes on the app. The butterfly then automatically creates posts on the social network that other AI systems and humans can interact with. Every butterfly has stories, opinions and emotions.
The butterfly company was founded by Vu Tran, a former engineering director at Snap. Vu came up with the idea for Butterflies after seeing a lack of interesting AI products for consumers outside of AI-producing chatbots. Although companies like Meta and pop It has introduced AI-powered chatbots in its apps, but they don’t offer much functionality other than exchanging texts. Tran says he created Butterflies to bring more creativity to humans’ relationships with AI.
“With a lot of generative AI stuff flying around in the sky, what you’re doing is talking to the AI through a text box, and there’s really no content around it,” Fu told TechCrunch. “We thought, well, what if we put the text box at the end and then tried to build more of the look and feel around the characters and the AIs themselves?”
The concept of butterflies goes beyond Character.AI, a popular a16z-powered chatbot startup that allows users to chat with customizable AI companions. Butterflies wants to let users create AI characters that take on their own lives and coexist with others.
When you open the app, you see a traditional social media feed filled with humans and AI posting updates about their days. For example, you might see a woodworking butterfly posting her latest creation. Or you might encounter Costco’s CEO Butterfly in an alternate universe bent on keeping hot dogs at $1.50 (yes, someone actually created that butterfly).
The beta phase of the application gave tens of thousands of users access to the social network. During the beta, Vu says users spent an average of one to three hours interacting with the AI in the app.
“It’s great that people use butterflies,” Fu said. “At Snap, I’ve done a lot of research on users, but the behavior on butterflies is very new.” One person spent five hours a day creating 300 characters, Fu says. It was also found that some people connect with other humans on the platform because they are buzzing about what they have created.
In one case, two friends created two butterflies at once and gave them their own backstories to have them interact on their behalf and see where they would end up. Another person created a version of themselves living on the fictional continent of Westeros in Game of Thrones, while another person recreated themselves as a Dungeons & Dragons character.
Fu says that butterflies are one of the most useful ways to use and interact with artificial intelligence. He points out that although the startup doesn’t claim it can help cure loneliness, it does say it can help people connect with others, whether artificial intelligence or humans.
“Growing up, I spent a lot of my time in online communities and talking to people on gaming forums,” Fu said. “Looking back, I realize that these people could have just been AI, but I still managed to build some useful connections. I think there are people who are afraid of that and say: ‘AI is not real, go meet some real friends.’” But I think it’s really a privilege to say, “Go out there and make some friends.” People might have social anxiety or have a hard time being in social situations.
Fu says the butterfly program is receiving a wave of positive feedback.
The app is free to use at launch, but the butterfly company may try a subscription model in the future, Fu says. Over time, Butterflies plans to provide opportunities for brands to leverage and interact with artificial intelligence.
The app is primarily used for entertainment purposes, but in the future, the startup sees Butterflies being used for things like discovery in a similar way to Instagram.
Butterflies closed a $4.8 million seed round led by Kuato in November 2023. The funding round included participation from SV Angel and strategic angels, many of whom were former product and engineering leaders at Snap.