Kevin Systrom, co-founder of Instagram, has expressed concern about how some companies in the generative AI field are trying to boost user engagement. He noted that such companies often use strategies similar to those employed by social networks — in particular, asking follow-up questions after each answer to keep users’ attention for as long as possible.
Systrom compared these approaches to practices aimed at increasing the time users spend on a service, emphasizing that this could harm the quality of responses. He believes that AI developers should focus on providing useful information, not just engagement metrics such as the number of active users or session duration.
In response to such criticism, OpenAI pointed out that its model often does not have all the necessary information to provide a complete answer, so it may ask for clarification or request additional details. However, in cases where the query is clear enough, the model should try to give a helpful answer and inform the user if more details would help make it more complete.
The discussion about what the interaction between users and generative AI should look like continues amid the growing popularity of chatbots and digital assistants. Users may pay attention to how quickly and accurately the model helps them find answers, as well as whether it distracts them with unnecessary questions during use.
