Instagram Chief Outlines the Challenges of AI Content

I’ve been covering social media for a long time now, more than a decade in fact, and I can tell you one thing that I’ve learned about Instagram chief Adam Mosseri: He’s a corporate drone, with little personality or passion about anything in particular, and no matter what, he’s going to tow the company line, and say whatever is best for Instagram and/or Meta, no matter what.

Mosseri has never displayed any real creative passion or pursuasion. Ask him what his favorite IG feature is, and he’ll say the one that they just released. Ask him who his favorite artist is, and he’ll mention the most popular one on IG at the time (or his brother), ask him what he’s into, and he’ll give you some random IG trends.

Sure, he started wearing cardigans and chains after he became the head of IG, but Mosseri has never been a creative person, and as such, he seemingly has no understanding of what creative people really want or need. He just gets the message from Zuck, justifies the logic behind that, then delivers it to the Instagram community, which is why I’m always skeptical of any post where he shares his personal thoughts and opinions in the app.

Because I honestly don’t think he has any, and through that prism, you can usually see the corporate messaging that he’s trying to blend into some moderately intellectualized screed.  

This week, Mosseri has shared his thoughts on the year ahead for IG, in a long rant which discusses the future of content, with the key premise being that “authenticity is becoming infinitely reproducible” in the AI-empowered world.

Across 20 text-only slides in an IG carousel post (could text posts become a new IG posting option at some stage?), Mosseri explains that:

• AI tools now enable anyone to replicate creators’ work
• AI content is also getting better, and will soon be indistinguishable from human-created content
• People don’t share personal content on Instagram anymore (they share it in DMs)
• Creators are turning to less polished content to combat AI fakes (rawness as proof, as Mosseri puts it)
• But AI tools will soon replicate this aesthetic as well, which will increase skepticism about what’s real and what’s not
• Instagram is working to highlight AI content through labeling, but it will soon become overwhelming, and IG won’t be able to label everything
• As a counter, Mosseri says that Instagram will look to verify authentic content, and highlight original creators
• Instagram will also look to do more to display info about who is behind each account

So what does all of this mean?

Well, based on the aforementioned overview of Mosseri’s motivations, I would say that the impetus here is fairly obvious: Mosseri’s trying to justify the influx of AI content, rather than working to protect creators, and give users more choice about what they see in the app.

Meta’s spending hundreds of billions of dollars developing AI tools, so it makes sense that it would want users to create with them, in order to boost its standing as an AI market leader. More people creating with AI is better for Meta, so Mosseri’s basically waving the white flag and saying that creators are going to have to get better at producing original content if they want to keep up with AI fakes.

This is despite the fact that more and more platforms are exploring anti-AI options, because people are becoming overwhelmed with AI slop. That, in turn, is impacting user trust to the point that they’re less likely to share posts, because they don’t know whether they’re real or fake. This is basically the antithesis of what social media has traditionally been about, in enabling people to share their own perspective with the world. AI has eroded this, and Meta has actively pushed for that to happen by prompting users to create with its AI tools at every turn, so Mosseri’s veiled concern about such is disingenuous to say the least.

Mosseri knows that Meta actually wants more AI-generated junk, which means more content flowing through the system, and more opportunity to keep people engaged, so it’s actively creating AI tools that are better at replicating real people’s work. So while Mosseri’s flagging initiatives to highlight authentic creative work, by real, human creators, it’s Meta itself that’s giving people the tools to negate this.

And no doubt the solutions here will also benefit Meta. Meta’s going to push more creators to sign up to Meta Verified, in order to then rank their content higher, because Meta will then know that this is from actual, human creators. And while Mosseri says that they won’t be able to flag all AI content, Meta could counter this to a large degree with its own in-built digital tagging (and by partnering with other platforms to detect different forms of AI tags), or even by adding a simple flagging system for users to indicate if they believe a post is AI generated (if the majority of tags suggest that its AI, IG could add the AI content tag).

There are ways to counter this, yet Mosseri is trying to justify the concept that AI content is going to become so good that creators will need to adapt their approach.

But they won’t.  

Sure, some AI-generated content is actually good, but the ease of creation enables anyone to pump out AI-generated rubbish, and that’s happening at such scale, that the vast majority of AI material is indeed slop.

You know what AI-generated content succeeds? Content with a good concept, a human-originated idea that forms the kernel of the depiction. AI tools can’t come up with human ideas, which remains the key differentiator, and AI tools can’t develop the same relationship with an audience as the top online creators.

Human connection remains key, and while Mosseri may want to downplay that, as a means to justify the influx of AI content, it remains the fundamental of all resonant, popular creative and creators.

That’s not going to change. AI tools might get better at creating derivative works, but they will always be derivative, and will only resonate based on the idea and concept behind them. Great ideas and concepts are hard to come up with, and even harder to come up with consistently, while very few people in the world have a personality that comes through on screen, and resonates with a broad audience, which then enables them to build a viable, valuable online community. And on top of that, even fewer people have the work ethic and commitment to make this happen.

That’s why, despite the promises of the “creator economy,” only a fraction of a percentage of online creators ever actually make real money from their work. This is not a realistic “career” for 99% of people, but the platforms want you to believe that if you just create content consistently, and feed more material into their data banks, which they can then show to users to keep them engaged, that you too can become the next online billionaire.

It’s chasing the dragon, and that dragon is what keeps their profits high. So of course they’re going to be like “creators need to come up with better angles to stay ahead of the game.”

But no matter how good AI content gets, it won’t matter if the concept is rubbish. Human-centered ideas are what people relate to, and the ability to come up with such is a skill in itself.

That’s where the true value is, and always has been, and having more tools to create more crap isn’t changing that.