Instagram head Adam Mosseri said he expects anxiety and resentment about artificial intelligence to intensify over the next few years—and that social media platforms may be limited in their ability to control it.
“[The anti-AI backlash] is going to continue to get worse,” he said in a recent appearance on the Colin & Samir podcast. “I think we’re going to see more frustration and anger, some of it founded, some of it unfounded.”
While AI anxiety is present across many industries, Mosseri thinks it is most acute in creative fields. Among other issues, creators worry about retaining ownership of their content, whether it can be used to train AI models, and job displacement.
Concerns are especially strong among creators and influencers whose income depends on social media, who now must contend with copycat accounts and AI-generated personas. Mosseri said he has recently received many complaints about AI characters stealing stand-up comedians’ jokes.
He noted that policing this kind of activity can be incredibly difficult.
Although Meta has long required disclosures for certain AI-generated content, and Instagram announced in August that it would restrict the reach of accounts featuring AI-generated people if they fail to self-identify, rooting out delinquents can be tricky. AI-identification technology is less than perfect, and often produces false positives.
“One of the ways to really get a lot of people angry is to label real creators as AI creators by mistake,” Mosseri said.
Instagram is still perfecting how to rank AI-generated posts in users’ feeds and currently ranks AI-generated influencers no differently than humans, he added.
Although such ranking issues are common whenever a new type of content explodes in popularity, this means human influencers are currently competing on a level playing field with virtual personalities that don’t need salaries, photo shoots, travel, or time off—and are already eroding users’ trust in the influencer economy.
(Mosseri did not comment on the podcast on whether he thinks AI influencers would take sponsorship deals away from human influencers or otherwise impact their incomes.)
Mosseri described understanding public opinion about AI as a crucial aspect of his job, noting that many young people strongly dislike the technology and that youth are critical to his company’s future.
“What I think [the backlash against AI] comes down to, when you really have a heart-to-heart with someone, is a fear of being left behind,” he said.
“I want us to embrace [AI] in ways that empower people, so they don’t feel like they’re left behind.”
