The opportunities for AI in social media are vast.

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AI Careers in Social Media

The social media industry has grown exponentially in the past two decades. The field includes platforms like Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, and X (formerly Twitter) that enable content sharing, communication, networking, and digital advertising. The industry serves billions of users and plays a critical role in shaping culture, politics, and commerce.

AI is used by social media platforms for connection suggestions, content recommendations, ad targeting, image and video recognition, spam and abuse detection, and sentiment analysis. Generative AI is increasingly used in filters, content creation tools, and chatbots. AI also supports trend forecasting and moderation systems that handle vast content volumes in real-time.

What would an AI professional contribute to the social media industry?

AI professionals build and maintain recommendation engines, train models to detect harmful content, and optimize delivery systems for user engagement. They might also work on user behavior prediction, algorithm fairness, or tools that enable creators to enhance their content with AI.

What are the biggest opportunities and challenges for AI in the industry?

AI in social media provides opportunities to enhance user experience, build safer communities, and offer AI-powered creative tools for businesses and influencers. AI could usher in a new era of personalized, immersive digital experiences, from hyper-realistic avatars and augmented or virtual reality content to proactive moderation and AI-driven community building.

Key challenges include algorithmic bias, user privacy, content moderation at scale, misinformation, and mental health concerns.

How does MSAI prepare students to lead in the social media space?

MSAI students have the opportunity to work on Capstone projects that may involve working with a social media company. Additionally, other projects the students work on often require working with the application programming interface (API) of certain social media companies, which gives them first-hand experience in interfacing with the technology of the social media companies.

Where have MSAI students and alumni interned or worked? 

  • Meta (Facebook) 
  • Google (YouTube) 
  • TikTok
Photo of Srikanth Gorthy

Srikanth Gorthy

MSAI '22, Senior data scientist at TikTok

Gorthy uses AI at TikTok to help build models that detect anomalies in the massive flow of data from the platform’s users. The goal is to create automated systems that decipher whether these anomalies are bad and need to be addressed or reflective of a new trend. 

To do that, Gorthy relies on storytelling, which he believes is a necessary skill in the communication and business space, particularly when it comes to AI.

“Data is everywhere,” Gorthy said. “You need to find the right data points and tell the right story so the reader is going to understand what the data is saying. If you’re not telling a story, you’re just talking into the void.”

Hear more from Gorthy about AI in social media