Life
The End of the Like Button? How AI Is Rewriting What We Want
As AI begins to predict, manipulate, and even replace our social media likes, the humble like button may be on the brink of extinction. Is human preference still part of the loop?
TL;DR — What You Should Know:
- Social media “likes” are now fuelling the next generation of AI training data—but AI might no longer need them.
- From AI-generated influencers to personalised chatbots, we’re entering a world where both creators and fans could be artificial.
- As bots start liking bots, the question isn’t just what we like—but who is doing the liking.
AI Is Using Your Likes to Get Inside Your Head
AI isn’t just learning from your likes—it’s predicting them, shaping them, and maybe soon, replacing them entirely. What is the future of the Like button?
Let’s be honest—most of us have tapped a little heart, thumbs-up, or star without thinking twice. But Max Levchin (yes, that Max—from PayPal and Affirm) thinks those tiny acts of approval are a goldmine. Not just for advertisers, but for the future of artificial intelligence itself.
Levchin sees the “like” as more than a metric—it’s behavioural feedback at scale. And for AI systems that need to align with human judgement, not just game a reward system, those likes might be the shortcut to smarter, more human-like decisions. Training AIs with:
(RLHF) is notoriously expensive and slow—so why not just harvest what people are already doing online?
But here’s the twist: while AI learns from our likes, it’s also starting to predict them—maybe better than we can ourselves.
In 2024, Meta used AI to tweak how it serves Reels, leading to longer watch times. YouTube’s Steve Chen even wonders whether the like button will become redundant when AI can already tell what you want to watch next—before you even realise it.
Still, that simple button might have some life left in it. Why? Because sometimes, your preferences shift fast—like watching cartoons one minute because your kids stole your phone. And there’s also its hidden superpower: linking viewers, creators, and advertisers in one frictionless tap.
But this new AI-fuelled ecosystem is getting… stranger.
Meet Aitana Lopez: a Spanish influencer with 310,000 followers and a brand deal with Victoria’s Secret. She’s photogenic, popular—and not real. She’s a virtual influencer built by an agency that got tired of dealing with humans.
And it doesn’t stop there. AI bots are now generating content, consuming it, and liking it—in a bizarre self-sustaining loop. With tools like CarynAI (yes, a virtual girlfriend chatbot charging $1/minute), we’re looking at a future where many of our online relationships, interests, and interactions may be… synthetic.
Which raises some uneasy questions. Who’s really liking what? Is that viral post authentic—or engineered? Can you trust that flattering comment—or is it just algorithmic flattery?
As more of our online world becomes artificially generated and manipulated, platforms may need new tools to help users tell real from fake. Not just in terms of what they’re liking — but who is behind it.
Over to YOU:
If future of the like button is that AI knows what you like before you do, can you still call it your choice?
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