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TikTok And A Vine Reboot Make AI Optional
Battle of the Slop // Illustration by Kate Walker
Every social media company is drawing a line in the sand on AI, rolling out new apps, features, and guardrails that dictate how much power users have in controlling what they see.
The Big Picture: There are two growing camps of people: those who think AI-generated content is the future of online life, and those who believe AI slop is destroying the internet. Social media companies now have to figure out how to cater to both sides… which could create a new kind of algorithmic echo chamber.
Between The Lines: “To AI or not to AI?” That is the question now posed to social-media users.
Pro AI: OpenAI’s Sora 2 sailed to the top of the app charts, Meta wants people to pay attention to Vibes, X’s Grok has permeated into everything on the app, and Snap signed a wide-ranging deal with Perplexity.
In the middle: TikTok is rolling out a slider in its Manage Topics tool that lets people adjust how much AI they see in their For You feeds, and YouTube Shorts has AI features but also protections against lazy and repetitive content.
Anti AI: The Jack Dorsey-backed relaunch of Vine (dubbed “diVine”) will not allow any AI-generated content, so that it can preserve a nostalgic Web 2.0 vibe.
The Future: Evan Henshaw-Plath (who goes by “Rabble”), a member of Dorsey’s nonprofit (hilariously called “and Other Stuff”) who brought Vine back to life, summed up the tension over AI perfectly when he told TechCrunch: “Companies see the AI engagement and they think that people want it [...] Yes, people engage with it; yes, we’re using these things — but we also want agency over our lives and over our social experiences.”
In other words, social media algorithms already have enough pros and cons without AI, so how those features are served and recommended can further complicate people’s engagement with platforms.
Next Scroll: Just as people flock to or avoid certain platforms because of the vibes, expect users to make similar choices based on how much AI content they see.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.