Instagram’s carefully curated grid that once defined the platform’s identity is officially a thing of the past.
According to Instagram head Adam Mosseri, artificial intelligence has fundamentally changed how content is created, shared, and consumed on the app.
In an end-of-year message posted on Threads, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said the platform must evolve as AI-generated content floods social media. He warned that the polished aesthetic that helped Instagram rise to global popularity is no longer relevant.
Mosseri said AI has made highly edited and visually perfect content easy to create, stripping it of its novelty and appeal.
Feed that made Instagram famous is ‘dead’
“Unless you’re under 25 and use Instagram, you probably think of the app as a feed of square photos,” Mosseri wrote. He described the old aesthetic as polished, featuring heavy makeup, skin smoothing, high-contrast photography, and picturesque landscapes.
“That feed is dead,” he added, noting that users stopped sharing personal moments on the main feed years ago.
Instead of posting to feeds, users now share personal updates through direct messages. Mosseri pointed to unfiltered “shoe shots and unflattering candids” as the new way people stay connected with friends.
AI images change what feels real
Mosseri said the rise of AI-generated images has made polished visuals both cheap to produce and boring to consume. As a result, creators will need to move away from curated grids and professional-style photography.
“People want content that feels real,” he wrote, warning that social feeds are increasingly filling up with “synthetic everything.”
Tools like Midjourney and Sora have made it easier than ever to create realistic AI images and videos. This has created major challenges for platforms like Instagram in distinguishing real content from synthetic media.
Mosseri acknowledged that social platforms will become worse at identifying AI-generated content as the technology continues to improve.
Meta’s own push Into AI
At the same time, Meta has aggressively integrated AI tools into Instagram and Facebook. Instagram launched an AI studio last year, allowing users to create custom chatbots, including digital versions of themselves.
The company has also experimented with AI-generated Instagram influencers modeled after real celebrities.
Calls for transparency and clear labels
Mosseri said one possible solution could involve camera companies cryptographically signing photos at the moment they are taken. This could help prove whether an image is real.
He also stressed the need for clearly labeling AI-generated content, improving transparency around who is posting, and building better creative tools so human creators can compete with AI-produced media.
“For most of my life I could safely assume that the vast majority of photographs or videos that I see are largely accurate captures of moments that happened in real life,” Mosseri wrote. “This is clearly no longer the case.”
