02 – Social media governance project: Summary of work in 2024

Social media platforms are one of the main vectors for AI influence in the modern world. In 2024, over 5 billion people were social media users, a number projected to rise to 6 billion by 2028 (Statista, 2024a); these users spent over two hours per day on social media (Statista, 2024b). Social media platforms are largely powered by AI systems, so attention to the AI systems used to drive these platforms is a central strand of any AI governance endeavour. GPAI has been working on social media governance since its inception: the Social Media Governance project has been running since the first round of GPAI projects in 2020. In this report, we summarise the work of the Social Media Governance project in 2024. The report is structured around the three main influences of AI on social media platforms. Recommender systems are AI systems that learn how to push content at platform users, through curation of their content feeds. We will discuss our work on recommender systems in Section 3. Harmful content classifiers are AI systems that learn how to withhold content from users, by blocking it or downranking it. We will discuss our work on harmful content classifiers in Section 4. Social media platforms are also a key medium for the dissemination of AI-generated content. We begin in Section 2 by discussing our work on AI-generated content, and how it can be identified.