Adam Mosseri, head of Instagram under Meta, shared his latest views on the impact of AI on the creator industry at the Bloomberg Screentime conference this week. He stated that AI will fundamentally change who can become a creator, enabling people who previously could not create content to produce content with certain quality and scale. However, he also acknowledged that bad actors will use this technology for malicious activities, and children growing up today must be educated to understand that just because they see a video does not mean its content is real.
Mosseri's comments came in response to recent remarks by popular creator MrBeast. MrBeast had previously stated on Threads that AI-generated videos may soon threaten creators' livelihoods and called this a frightening time for the industry.
Against this, Mosseri offered a different perspective. He pointed out that most creators will not use AI technology to replicate large-scale sets and meticulously produced content like MrBeast. Instead, AI will allow creators to do more and produce better work. Mosseri compared the impact of AI on content creation to the historical significance of the internet, arguing that the internet lowered the cost of content distribution to almost zero, allowing almost anyone to become a publisher. Similarly, generative AI models will bring the cost of content production to nearly zero.
Mosseri revealed that there is already a large amount of hybrid content on major social platforms, where creators use AI tools for color correction or adding filters in their workflow, but do not produce fully synthetic content. He predicted that the line between real content and AI-generated content will become increasingly blurred, and hybrid content will dominate for a considerable period of time.
Regarding content labeling, Mosseri admitted that Meta has a responsibility to do more, but also acknowledged that the company's previous approach had issues. Initially, Meta tried to automatically label AI content, which led to marking real content processed with AI tools like Adobe as AI-generated. This approach was described by Mosseri as futile. He stated that the tagging system needs improvement, and Meta should provide more background information to help users make judgments.
Mosseri emphasized that relying solely on platforms to label AI content is not enough; society as a whole needs to change. He used his three children as an example. His children are nine, seven, and five years old. He needs them to understand when they access the internet that seeing a video does not mean that something actually happened. Mosseri said that when he grew up, he could assume that a video was a capture of reality, but today's children need to think about who is sharing the content and what their motives are.
In the interview, Mosseri also discussed Instagram's future direction, including plans for a dedicated TV app, strategic adjustments to make Reels and private messages core features, and the impact of changes in TikTok's U.S. ownership on the competitive landscape. He believes having competitors is good, and TikTok's presence in the U.S. has pushed Instagram to improve. Regarding the TikTok deal, Mosseri stated that the app itself, its ranking system, and creators have not undergone substantial changes. From an incentive mechanism perspective, this is not a significant change.
These statements reflect the deep understanding of challenges in the AI era within the social media industry. As AI technology develops rapidly, finding a balance between promoting creative democratization and maintaining content authenticity has become a key issue that the entire industry must address.
