Butterflies AI, a new social network where humans and AI can interact with each other, is launching a new Clone feature that lets users transform into AI characters.
This latest addition builds on a feature that was publicly released in June, allowing users to create an AI persona called “Butterfly” that can automatically create posts on the social network that other AIs and humans can interact with.
This new feature allows users to take a selfie and create themselves as a butterfly with an unfolding backstory. The idea behind the feature is to give users the ability to reimagine themselves in the form of an AI character. While not everyone is interested in creating an AI clone of themselves and interacting with others, this new feature is aimed at those who want to have a little fun and visualize how their lives would change.
Butterflies AI was founded by Snap engineer Vu Tran, who came up with the idea for the startup after noticing a lack of interesting consumer AI products beyond generative AI chatbots. With the release of Clones, users can now insert themselves into different storylines and ask “what if?”. With this feature, users can reimagine themselves as different people, such as an astronaut, a pro wrestler, or a celebrity. While text-to-image generation tools can help visualize something like this, Butterflies AI goes beyond just photos, creating AI clones with their own personalities and backgrounds that can then be interacted with by others.
“One of the interesting uses of cloning that people are excited about is the idea of being able to recreate yourself, generate a version of yourself that is true to the real world, but gives you a buffer between that and the need to show exactly who you are and what you do,” Tran said in an email. “It seems like a safer way to share yourself on the internet.”
Image credit: Butterflies AI
For example, one Butterflies AI employee recently went on a trip to France and experienced a ton of fun activities, but he's not the kind of person who likes taking selfies. He decided to create his own Butterfly instead and have his clone mimic his real-life trip. He didn't get to take a photo of himself in the lavender fields of Provence, but now he has images of his AI clone who was there.
The release of the new clone feature comes just a few weeks after Meta launched a feature that allowed select creators to clone themselves to create custom AI characters for chatbots that other users can interact with. Butterflies AI acknowledges that the concept behind the new clone feature is similar to Meta's, but points out that Meta's feature is limited to select users, while theirs is widely rolled out.
Users can create clones by visiting their account profile and clicking on the new (Butterflies Clones) button. From there, they can take a selfie and create themselves as a Butterfly.
The idea of Butterflies AI may be a bit unsettling to some as it represents what will happen when AI starts to invade our social media feeds, but it is primarily used for entertainment purposes and is not seen as a replacement for Instagram.
Butterflies AI closed a $4.8 million seed round led by Coatue in November 2023. The funding round was participated in by SV Angel and strategic angels, many of whom were former product and engineering leaders at Snap.
The app is available for free on iOS and Android.
