The Real Reason Most AI Social Tools Are Useless (or a Liability) for Brands

AI is marketers’ latest obsession. But on social, it’s often the wrong tool for the job

EXPERT OPINION BY JASON MITCHELL, CEO, MOVEMENT STRATEGY @MOVEMENTS

AI tools should be one of the best things that’s happened to social media marketing in a very long time. It allows brands to process enormous amounts of information, find patterns across data that would take a person days to uncover, explore more creative directions, understand audiences faster and eliminate a lot of wasted work. But instead of a gamechanger, AI is becoming an accelerant for every brands’ worst impulses on social. 

Why do AI social media marketing tools fail?

Part of the problem is how marketers misuse it. There are plenty of cautionary tales; brands like Guess and J.Crew that were seduced into leveraging AI to simply make more stuff—as if the internet isn’t already overstuffed with content. But the other, more fundamental problem is with the AI platforms themselves. 

The truth is, AI and social media don’t speak the same language. Where AI platforms are very good at giving you an answer, social media is often about demonstrating that there isn’t one. The entire culture of social media is built on shared, narrowly contextual and unpredictable........

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