AI or human – who does comment moderation better? Well, I have some interesting data about what customers really want from the recent report conducted in the UK by NapoleonCat and Norstat.
And an example of a tool that uses the best of both worlds of automation and human interactions. Ready?
Set up smart auto-replies for your social media
Set up smart auto-replies for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Automatically hide or delete spam and hate speech – with an all-in-one social media tool.
Social media automation is nothing new
Let’s start with story time.
A dozen years ago, while I was working as a social media manager for a B2B tech company, automation was still a pretty new concept in social media. So much so, that when I ran my first automated outreach campaign on what was then called Twitter, I received some backlash from a couple of industry experts (and one specifically), outwardly criticizing my company for trying to automate conversations on social.
(I won’t go into detail about the levels of stress that caused me. 🥲)
Fast forward to 2025, and social media automation is the bread and butter for marketers and audiences. Nobody’s surprised (or appalled) by companies using automation to manage customer conversations anymore.
And we have artificial intelligence to automate even more things, like generating actual responses. (I don’t even want to imagine what the response of those experts would be to that back then.)
The thing is, neither automation nor AI are “bad” in social media – and they never were. It’s how humans use them that can make them more or less effective.
After all, today, we don’t use AI to avoid having conversations with customers. (Right? Right?)
Or at least, we should use it to enhance those conversations and automate the simple things to gain more time for the ones that are more complex and require more time and engagement.
(I’ll show you how to do that in a short while.)
But let’s make a simple distinction between generative AI and automation first.
Automated responses vs. AI-generated responses on social media – what’s the difference?
When we’re talking about automating responses in social media, there are several mechanisms that you can use to support your moderation team.
- Use Auto-moderation like the one in NapoleonCat, where you write your responses and set up automation rules, and the system automatically posts responses if specific criteria are met.
In this case, a human writes the responses, but automation makes sure they’re posted under relevant comments or DMs.
- Use generative AI to create the responses for you or enhance/edit the ones you write. This has nothing to do with actual response publication.
- There are also more sophisticated generative AI tools that generate responses based on people’s questions/comments – either posting scripted answers based on input FAQs or generating completely original responses while the algorithm is continuously learning to get better and better at it.
This means that the actual automated responses that your audience reads can be different:
- They might be more or less relevant.
- They might sound more or less automated and robotic.
- They might be written by AI (which is still pretty easy to detect if you know what to look for) or by humans (and still be considered automated.)
Now, let’s use this section to preface an interesting finding.
AI vs Human Responses on Social Media: Insights from the NapoleonCat x Norstat Report
NapoleonCat and Norstat recently conducted a study on the way UK consumers use social media along their buying journey. (By the way, you should really check it out, as it has tons of really interesting insights. You can download it by clicking on this link.)
Apart from taking a really close look at consumer behavior on different social media platforms at different stages of the buying process, the study also looked at how people react to AI vs human responses on social media.
It might not be surprising that the majority of respondents (63%) said they preferred responses written by a human, with just 13% favoring AI-generated responses. Almost a quarter (24% to be exact) said it really didn’t make a difference for them.
Consumers most open to AI-generated responses are TikTok users, while Instagram and Facebook users often prefer a more traditional, human approach more.
Interestingly, only 7% of the people surveyed were positive that they could always detect an AI-generated reply.
What also stands out in the results of the study is that the more consumers value a positive customer experience on social media overall, the more they tend to prefer human-written responses. 👀
Those who prefer AI-generated responses most often cite speed and convenience as the main reasons. On the other hand, those who favor responses written by humans emphasize that they feel more personal and authentic.
And speaking of speed and response time, the study also measured customer expectations in this area. The report found that:
- 43% of customers expect brands to respond to DMs and comments within a maximum of 3 hours
- Around a quarter expect a response within an hour.
So, how quickly you respond to your customers is clearly important to them.
Which brings us to a key question:
How do you combine “human” with “quick responses”? Especially when a brand has tons of engagement and a high volume of questions and comments?
The answer lies in automation – but in automation done right. Because no, human and automated don’t need to exclude one another. Really, they’re two sides of the same coin. (The coin reference is not accidental here. 💵)
Let me show you how to combine the two using one tool.
Set up smart auto-replies for your social media
Set up smart auto-replies for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Automatically hide or delete spam and hate speech – with an all-in-one social media tool.
How NapoleonCat’s Auto-moderation bridges the gap between AI and human social media responses
The advantage NapoleonCat’s Auto-moderation has, especially when considering the report findings mentioned above, is that it’s basically the best of both worlds: it lets you write human responses and post them automatically – pretty much instantly when a relevant message or comment appears on your social media profiles.
That’s because it’s based on sets of customizable criteria that trigger the response, but it’s you who writes the response. And because you can write multiple responses for one rule that the system will then randomize, the varied responses also look less like they’re automated at all.
And setting them up is really easy. Depending on your scenarios, you can use Auto-moderation to:
- Automatically reply to frequently asked questions based on relevant keywords and phrases.
- Reply to product questions in ad comments on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.
- Send out-of-office replies letting people know when someone can reach out.
- Instantly remove spam links from comments under your ads.
- Hide offensive comments without having your team manually moderate them.
- Automatically block troll accounts on Facebook.
And the way it works is really easy. You follow a wizard, filling in all the steps to define:
- The social media platform and profile(s).
- Individual social media posts and ads, if you want different rules for different content pieces.
- What triggers the rule (keywords, type of comment, sentiment, or a tag)
- What happens as a result. You can send responses in different variants but also hide comments or reroute them to individual moderators automatically.
- And when the rule is supposed to work. You can have Auto-moderation work 24/7 or during specific times of day or on specific days, such as only on weekends.
To make it even easier, you have access to some ready-made Auto-moderation templates in which some of the steps are prefilled, so launching an Auto-moderation rule takes even less time.
Now, the key to the human responses is precisely the fact that you can have multiple versions of your response rotating, so that even with a high volume of questions that trigger the same rule (e.g., when there’s some sort of a crisis situation going on), people won’t see the same response posted over and over again. (Which could understandably make them frustrated.)
Set up smart auto-replies for your social media
Set up smart auto-replies for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Automatically hide or delete spam and hate speech – with an all-in-one social media tool.
AI or automated (or both) vs. human is really a false opposition
You can use both automation/AI tools and still reply to your customers and followers in a relatable, human way. Whether that’s your actual moderation team doing it manually using the Social Inbox or your moderation team writing a list of responses that will be triggered by different types of comments.
It’s still your moderation team. And it’s still people talking to people.
(And if you want to try how Auto-moderation works in real life, get a 14-day free trial of NapoleonCat here.)
FAQs
How is AI affecting social media customer service?
More and more businesses are using AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants to handle common questions, reducing wait times and freeing up human customer service agents/moderators for more complex issues.
AI can also help analyze customer sentiment, identify trends, and suggest responses based on past interactions.
Automation tools can monitor social media for brand mentions and customer feedback. But while AI improves efficiency, human oversight is still essential to make sure responses are accurate and to keep a personal touch in customer interactions.
How does AI content differ from human content?
How about we let AI answer this one? 🙂 Here’s what ChatGPT says:
AI-generated content is typically faster to produce, highly scalable, and data-driven, but it can lack the creativity, nuance, and emotional depth of human-written content. AI excels at summarizing information, generating structured text, and optimizing for SEO, but it may struggle with originality, humor, and deep storytelling.
Human content, on the other hand, reflects personal experiences, cultural awareness, and unique perspectives that AI cannot fully replicate. The best results often come from a blend of both—AI for efficiency and humans for creativity and authenticity.
Is AI more effective than humans?
AI can definitely work at a much larger scale than a human – which definitely makes it more efficient. But this doesn’t mean it’s more effective. For best results, AI should be a tool used by human teams to scale interactions and reply faster, but still maintain the human touch and authenticity.
What are the pros and cons of AI in social media?
Pros:
- Efficiency: AI automates tasks like content scheduling, customer service, and data analysis, saving time and resources.
- Personalization: AI tailors content and recommendations based on user behavior, improving engagement.
- 24/7 availability: AI chatbots and monitoring tools provide instant responses and support around the clock.
- Data insights: AI analyzes trends, sentiment, and audience behavior to help businesses make informed decisions.
Cons:
- Lack of human touch: AI-generated interactions can feel robotic and miss emotional nuances.
- Potential biases: AI models can reinforce biases present in the data they are trained on.
- Misinformation risks: AI can generate or spread misleading content if not adequately monitored.
- Over-reliance on automation: Too much AI involvement can make social media interactions feel impersonal, reducing genuine engagement.
Set up smart auto-replies for your social media
Set up smart auto-replies for Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube. Automatically hide or delete spam and hate speech – with an all-in-one social media tool.
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