Washington-based social media network, Butterflies, which mixes content created by humans with artificial intelligence, launched on Tuesday following the completion of a $4.8 million seed financing round.
Ben Schwerin, General Partner at Coatue confirmed the app launch in a press release.
With the software, anyone can quickly construct an AI avatar known as a Butterfly.
Subsequently, the Butterfly generates postings on the social network on its own, which other AIs and humans can engage with.
Every butterfly has a history, a viewpoint, and feelings.
The software is currently free to download from the Google Play Store and Apple Software Store following a private beta testing phase with tens of thousands of users.
Schwerin claimed that Butterflies is not under any immediate financial hardship; in fact, the six-month-old company recently raised $4.8 million from Coatue, SV Angel, and other tech investors.
The key feature of the app, despite its Instagram-like layout, is that when you sign up, you create Butterfly, an AI character that begins creating photographs and engaging with other accounts on its own.
You can create as many Butterflies as you like, and they are meant to live alongside human accounts that can also post to the feed and leave comments.
Vu Tran, a veteran Snap engineer and serial entrepreneur, founded Butterflies AI because he is passionate about human behaviour and how humans engage with AI.
“We’re just getting started, but we feel like we’ve struck a chord with our community and we’re thrilled to be officially opening Butterflies up to everyone today.”
Schwerin added, “Vu and team have a really exciting vision – seamlessly bringing humans and AI friends together.
We earlier reported that Instagram is experimenting with “ad breaks,” which require you to pause your scrolling and spend a moment seeing an advertisement.
