Today, I want to talk about several AI-related features recently updated in WeChat.
To be honest, I really feel that the last bit of human touch in Moments might be disappearing.
The first one is a new AI feature in internal testing for Moments: AI Writing Assistant.
Yesterday, I happened to attend a Fliggy press conference, took some photos, and wanted to post them on Moments in the evening.
Then I saw a new feature in the bottom right corner: AI Writing Assistant. When you click it, it generates three Moments posts based on your photos and the text you've already written. You can pick one and post it directly.
The moment I saw this feature, I had a bad feeling.
Although Moments is not what it used to be, it is still one of the few places in my heart where people can truly express themselves and say something a bit more private and real.
Those traces of people's lives, those clouds, those winds, those moments when we are at a loss for words—they are beautiful.
But when you put AI in such a prominent and powerful position, I feel the atmosphere of the entire Moments becomes less beautiful.
Then I saw the second feature.
AI Interaction/Commentary.
If you long-press the text of a post in Moments, there is now a new feature: AI Commentary.
After clicking, you can see the AI's evaluation of the text, and at the same time, you can quickly have it write a comment for you.
Looking at these two features together, I actually feel a bit disappointed today.
I really dislike these two updates; I dislike these two features.
Some might say, 'Who do you think you are? As long as the public likes it, it's fine.'
I know, but I still want to say that I don't like them, and I hope these two features are never fully rolled out. On April 19, 2012, Moments was launched with WeChat 4.0.
The description text said:
Record life in an album.
At the same time, share photos to Moments so that friends in your contacts can see them.
If I were to evaluate the philosophy of Moments back then, I think it could be perfectly summarized by a current app's slogan:
Record a beautiful life.
Initially, Moments couldn't even post pure text; you could only post photos and links.
Because WeChat believed that phones follow people into the real world. When a user sees a sunset or encounters an event, they can take a photo immediately. What Moments records is a person's reaction to the real environment and the beautiful life they want to share.
That's why the camera icon became the entry point for posting to Moments.
Allen Zhang later described it as a square.
It's like you pass through the square every day and see groups of acquaintances chatting.
You can slow down, stop, and chat with everyone, give a like to say hello, or just take a look and leave.
That was the Moments of that time, and the Moments in my heart.
But with the addition of these two AI features, the nature of Moments seems to have changed.
On one side of Moments, AI is recording a 'beautiful life' for one person.
On the other side, AI is performing 'beautiful socializing' for another person.
In this once-vibrant square, there are fewer and fewer humans and more and more falsehoods.
In the end, only a group of Agents are left, separated by a Moments post, completing one distorted social interaction after another for their masters.
Many people think that in a social relationship, the words you write and the things you say are the content.
But I want to say, they never were. In a social relationship, the source itself is the real content.
It's like a love letter we send out.
Even if I know it's written roughly or poorly, because I wrote it myself, the recipient can still feel my sincerity.
Of course, you can also use AI to generate a love letter; it will certainly be more charming and eloquent.
But if the other person knows you used AI to write it, I think they would only say:
'You're using AI to write a love letter? Are you out of your mind?'
Since 2023, I've thought about this for a long time, and I've expressed it many times: In the AI era, everything related to efficiency will be impacted by AI. Only the relationships and sincere connections between people are eternal.
Including the company I'm running now, Xushi Media—many people might not know our mission and vision.
I think I can express it here, even if it feels a bit embarrassing: We hope to link everything in the AI era and become the most valuable connection network in the AI era.
So, what I want to say is that in human relationships, some inefficiencies are themselves a unit of measurement for sincerity.
Any AI tool can create features like AI writing or AI commentary, but this is Moments. I feel that Moments absolutely should not do this itself. It's equivalent to a signal:
WeChat Moments now encourages AI content.
This signal conveys a terrifying message, even shattering the tone set for Moments in 2012.
From product data, everything might even look better.
For example, more people posting, more people commenting, and higher interaction rates.
But the most dangerous success for a social product is when interaction data gets better and better, but we ourselves slowly disappear from the interaction.
Besides Moments, there's another AI feature I don't know how to describe, and it has a bigger impact on me because it's closely related to myself.
When you open Official Accounts, you might see 'Xiao Wei' (WeChat's AI assistant) appearing in the first position on the left, permanently pinned there.
When you click this feature, it automatically summarizes the articles from the Official Accounts you frequently read.
As a content consumer, I know it's very convenient.
I face an explosion of information every day. Seeing so many updates from accounts I follow, I'm often too lazy to read them. I just want to know roughly what they're about.
But I am also a creator in the WeChat content ecosystem.
To write my content and maintain the update frequency, I've stayed up countless nights just to keep writing. Many friends know that I handle company affairs and business during the day, and I basically only have time to write these articles after 11 PM. For more complex ones, I might pull an all-nighter until 8 AM and only finish around 9 AM. Even when I write fast, it's usually 3 or 4 AM.
Kobe said, 'Have you seen Los Angeles at 4 AM?' I want to say, in the past year, I've seen Beijing at 5 AM almost every day.
But seeing the content I worked so hard on being turned into an AI summary and presented to users first—that feeling is a bit disappointing and sad.
I could understand putting an AI summary in the menu bar of an article's details page. After all, maybe I just didn't write well, and people couldn't finish it, so an AI summary makes sense. I accept that.
But now, you've elevated the AI summary to such a high level, and it's as if you're afraid people won't use it, so you're desperately pushing this feature.
I don't know how to express my disappointment.
It feels like the content we create no longer has much meaning. Every word we write by hand is encouraged to be summarized by AI, eventually turning into those dozens or a hundred words of summary.
Then what is the point of our content creation?
Is it just to eventually become an AI summary?
Content consumption used to be two-way: I create, you consume.
But now, AI's status has been raised so high, gaining rights it never had before. It decides for the reader what is important in an article, what can be deleted, and what is worth seeing.
Will this eventually influence creators in reverse, making them write only so that their viewpoints are easier to extract, their paragraphs more standardized, and everything easier for AI to recommend? Will this become a new generation of clickbait?
I don't know.
I just feel that WeChat was meant to bring people closer together.
But now, why does it feel like the distance between people and AI is becoming more distant?
People used to be separated only by a wall called a screen. But now, this wall has become an Agent higher than a mountain and wider than a sea.
Between people, there seems to be no one left.
In 'The Wandering Earth 2', there is a classic line:
'A civilization without people is meaningless.'
I still like AI.
I still like creating.
You could say that without AI, I'd be a 150-pound waste of space.
But I've always had a very clear boundary in my heart.
AI can help me look up information, write code, and handle work, amplifying my abilities to an extent I couldn't have imagined in the past.
But human relationships, human communication, and those true feelings between people—I don't want to hand them over to it.
It can help me become a stronger person.
But it cannot replace me in being a person.
Many years ago, when beauty filters were first born.
At first, we just wanted to blur out a pimple or brighten our skin tone a bit.
Later, eyes got bigger, chins got sharper, and skin became flawless.
Everyone in the photos became more beautiful and perfect.
But was that the real us?
AI can help us reach further places.
But please don't let it reach each other on our behalf.
I hope that many years from now, when I open Moments, I can still see a friend posting a blurry photo of a cloud.
He says:
'Today's sky is so beautiful.'
No fancy rhetoric, no profound insights, and no AI to summarize the meaning of this moment for him.
But I know that at that moment, he really looked up at the sky.
And he really wanted to share that cloud with me.
