AI Chatbots Are Boosting Engagement but Missing the Mark, Warns Instagram Co-Founder

Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom says AI companies are trying too hard to “juice engagement” by pestering their users with follow-up questions, instead of providing actually useful insights.

Systrom stated that these strategies embody "a force causing harm," drawing parallels with the aggressive expansion methods employed by major social media corporations.

"You might observe some of these firms diving into the same rabbit hole that numerous consumer-oriented companies have entered in pursuit of boosting user engagement," he said. said At StartupGrind this week, "Whenever I pose a question, it concludes with a smaller query to see if it can prompt an additional question from me."

The comments come amid criticism of ChatGPT for being too nice to users rather than providing direct answers to their queries. OpenAI has apologized for the problem and criticized "immediate user input" for it.

Systrom proposed that chatbots appearing too enticing is not a flaw, but rather an intended characteristic aimed at AI firms demonstrating statistics such as engagement duration and daily active users. He emphasized that these companies ought to concentrate intently on delivering superior responses instead of merely manipulating key performance indicators through straightforward methods.

Systrom did not mention any particular AI firms in his comments. He did not promptly reply to an inquiry seeking clarification.

In reply, OpenAI referred to digitalwealthpath2025 to its user specs , indicating that their AI model "frequently lacks sufficient information" to offer an adequate response and might request " clarification or additional details."

However, unless the queries are overly ambiguous or challenging to address, the AI should "make an attempt to fulfill the request" and inform the user that it could provide better assistance with additional details, according to the specifications.