'Easier To Fingerprint Real Media' — Instagram Head Admits Naked Eye Not Enough To Spot AI Slop

Facebook head Adam Mosseri admitted that AI technology has got so advanced that it's no longer feasible to visually identify and flag fake AI-generated content in social media feeds.

"All the major platforms will do good work identifying AI content, but they will get worse at it over time as AI gets better at imitating reality," Mosseri wrote in a post on social media platform Threads. "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," he added.

Mosseri stated that users will no longer default to assuming that the video or image being suggested to them by algorithms are authentic. He added that they will develop a sense of assumed scepticism to avoid being fooled by AI slop.

"Over time, we are going to move from assuming what we see is real by default, to starting with scepticism when we see the media, and paying much more attention to who is sharing something and why they might be sharing it," Mosseri said.

The head of Facebook's advice to social media creators to compete with AI-generated content was to lean into making themselves look more "unflattering" and "unproduced" as a marker of authenticity.

As AI is known to generate a cleaner, airbrushed aesthetic, Mosseri argued that raw media like the ones that users share on Instagram's short form Stories feature would gain much more traction.

Media shared on Instagram Stories are more candid as they feature shaky videos and blurry photos as well as unflattering closeups and lack of fancy makeup.

"We are going to see a significant acceleration of a more raw aesthetic over the next few years. Savvy creators are going to lean into explicitly unproduced and unflattering images of themselves," Mosseri wrote.

The Instagram head also emphasised on the importance of tracing the origins of media so as to understand the intent of posters and makes informed choices on what to believe.

"We, as an industry, are going to need to surface much more context about not only the media on our platforms, but the accounts that are sharing it in order for people to be able to make informed decisions about what to believe. Where is the account? When was it created? What else have they posted?" he said.