Why are we using AI for social media content?

A few days ago, I took a peek at Metricool’s latest report, about The State of AI in Social Media in 2025. In it, I learned that I am one of a mere 3.7% of social media creators who aren’t using AI in their social media work.

That’s right, folks: 96% of marketers use AI for social media in 2025. 

Oooof, that is a much higher number than I'd like it to be. 🫠 I'm proud to be a part of that 3.7%, and I could certainly yell all day about how AI Is Bad, Actually. The thing that really got me in this report, however? It's what creators are using AI for.

Most social media managers are using AI for the things it’s worst at

I have to give Metricool credit for including this pull quote from an agency creative who hasn’t drunk the AI Kool-Aid yet:

“When it comes to planning strategies, I find it a bit generic, based on my experience, which has made it a bit difficult for me to move forward with its use. Even so, I believe it can be fundamental in eliminating repetitive processes and improving research times.”
–Gloriana Acuña

Ms. Acuña hits the nail on the head in every respect with that. AI is trained on content that already exists. Of course it’s only going to come up with generic ideas–it can only pull up ideas that have already been done before by someone else.

Repetitive tasks and processes, however? Those are exactly the kinds of things computers are good at. Computers can complete dozens of simple tasks in the time it would take you or I to do just one of them. That’s precisely why they’re useful, and why they’ve become so central to the things we all do in a day.

So why is it, then, that the two least common uses of AI in social media management are responding to comments and messages (17%) and automating repetitive tasks (19%)?

How much time have you spent posting “thank yous” and emoji hearts on comment after comment, or copy/pasting the same response to a DM multiple times? This is exactly the kind of repetitive task that a computer is suited for. And yet, very few people – even business owners who have plenty of other things to do in their day – are taking advantage of that.

Meanwhile, the single most common use of AI? Content idea generation. 

This is absolutely wild to me, considering 45% of respondents said they’ve held back on releasing AI content due to concerns about quality. 

Why are so many of us going all-in on the content creation features of AI, when nearly half of us don’t even trust it to produce good work?

Maybe hyper-capitalist hustle culture has us feeling so desperate to save time that we'll hand off tasks to a tool we can't even rely on. Doing that is a big mistake, in the long run.

This person gets it:

“...the word speed comes up a lot; the speed as a benefit of using AI. What are we running from? I think speed for speed’s sake, just to produce more content faster, goes against good judgment.”
–Alba

Seriously, if saving time is your motivation, handing off content creation to AI makes the least sense out of the available options.

Have you ever delegated a task to the wrong person, only to end up spending as much time fixing it as you would have if you’d done it yourself? It’s like that, but with a robot. 

Basically, the vast majority of humans using AI in their social media are using it to solve the wrong problem. You can reap just as much, if not more, benefit from turning AI’s powers toward handling the repetitive tasks that bore you to tears. It’ll also do a better job, because repetitive tasks are what computers have been doing for decades. 

Instead of letting AI blot out our unique and memorable voice with generic content, we should be putting it to work behind-the-scenes to take the boring repetition out of our day.

So, ask yourself: what time-saving uses could you find for AI or automations that aren't generation of content or ideas?