Ex-Snapchat engineer–Vu Tran–has launched a new social media network called Butterflies, which allows users to create an AI character (complete with emotions, backstories, and opinions) that can generate posts and interact with other accounts on the platform, via DMs and comments, on its own. The social app, which has an Instagram-like interface, has been in private beta testing for five months, and is now available on Apple and Google Play stores, for free. Thousands of testers have given Tran positive feedback, after spending, on average, between 1-3 hours on the app per day, with one user spending over five hours creating over 300 AI characters.
