The main dude in charge of Instagram reckons it makes more sense to label “real” content in 2026, as the AI slop takeover continues on its unstoppable Army of The Dead-like march.
In a threads post, Adam Mosseri says “authenticity is becoming infinitely reproducible.” He’s massively wrong by the way. Clearly. Obviously. Authenticity is still authentic. The slop is instantly identifiable as slop by anyone with a functioning brain. But, for argument’s sake, let’s continue this post on the premise that what Zuckerberg’s Lackyberg is saying holds water. It doesn’t. But let’s pretend.
The palatable face in charge of ‘Insta’ reckons it’s more practical to tell people what they’re seeing is real, rather than labelling what isn’t. He isn’t planning on doing all that much to let people know about obscene fakery, but he will tell you what’s real.
“There is already a growing number of people who believe, as I do, that it will be more practical to fingerprint real media than fake media,” Mosseri wrote in the post that refers to a problem Instagram is actively contributing to by welcoming an obscene amount of AI-generated content onto its platform.
The AI slop problem exists because Instagram allows it to exist. So, with respect Adam, this is your problem. Wholly and indisputably.
In comments that read like he’s an outside observer rather than an active contributor, Mosseri adds: “We haven’t truly grappled with synthetic content yet. We are now seeing an abundance of AI generated content, and there will be much more content created by AI than captured by traditional means in a few years time.
“We like to talk about “AI slop,” but there is a lot of amazing AI content that thankfully lacks the disturbing properties of twisted limbs and absent physics. Even the quality AI content has a look though: it tends to feel fabricated somehow. The imagery today is too slick, people’s skin is too smooth. That will change; we are going to start to see more and more realistic AI content.”
Yeah, OK Adam. The “amazing AI content” isn’t all that amazing. It’s absolute dogger. Time to stop looking at this fella as the a friendly face.
