Does Instagram tell people they are talking to a bot?

Instagram does not label automated messages, so whatever the person understands is whatever you wrote.

That is a design decision you own, and the version that works is not a disclaimer. Nobody wants to read "you are chatting with a bot" before they get their answer. What actually prevents the tricked feeling is answering fast and getting out of the way when the question is bigger than the flow.

Three things that carry the honesty without a label:

• Answer the actual question in the first message. A generic "thanks for reaching out, a team member will be with you shortly" is the message that makes people feel handled rather than helped.
• Offer the escape early. A quick reply that says "talk to a person" costs one button and it is the difference between a bot and a wall.
• Match the voice you use everywhere else. A flow that suddenly speaks corporate is more jarring than one that speaks like your captions.

When the conversation does need a human, hand the conversation to a person rather than letting the flow keep guessing. The handover stops the automation, moves the thread into the shared inbox and keeps the history, so the person picking it up can see what was already asked.

The rule we would give a new account: automate the answer people ask forty times a day, and route everything else to a human within two messages. That is the split where automation reads as service rather than as a filter between the customer and you.