As the calendar turned over into a new year, Adam Mosseri took to Threads to issue a warning. The Head of Instagram sees realistic generative AI content as an issue that will reshape social media in 2026 and beyond — but he also believes that creators can turn that threat into a benefit.
Mosseri styled his 2026 outlook as a lengthy, far-reaching essay he posted on his Threads account. His topline message is clear: AI engines have become so powerful that it may soon become nigh impossible to tell reality from deepfakes. “The key risk that a platform like Instagram faces is that, as the world inevitably changes more and more quickly, the platform fails to keep up,” Mosseri wrote. “Looking forward to 2026, one new significant shift is that authenticity is becoming infinitely reproducible.”
Though Mosseri believes that “AI is generating photographs and videos indistinguishable from captured media,” he has ideas for how to address the problem, and true to form, those plans require Instagram to uplift creators. Pernicious AI deepfakes have created “a significant market for content from people,” Mosseri claims, since creators still command true authenticity. As evidence, the Instagram Head noted that athletes and journalists have become more authoritative than their employers.
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Once upon a time, creators could use polished content to establish links with their followers, but as AI models become more advanced, fans seek a more raw, unvarnished form of connection to their favorite social media stars. That’s Mosseri’s theory, and it explains some of Instagram’s recent business decisions. For example, since direct messages provide a particularly human form of interaction, Instagram has slid into DMs with a litany of new features.
Mosseri also wants to draw attention to creators rather than playing deepfake whack-a-mole. “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 wrote.
The Threads essay feels like Mosseri’s version of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address from the White House, in which he famously warned Americans about the rising threat of the military-industrial complex. Like Mosseri, Eisenhower recognized that a system he helped build now posed a threat to his constituents.
That comparison leads us to the question many people have already asked in response to Mosseri’s essay: If Instagram is so worried about the threat of realistic AI, why is it still developing it? Why turn creators into chatbots, when that move provides the training material LLMs need to produce scarily realistic, creator-style content?
It’s a fair question, and Mosseri’s stance seems to be that creators must embrace AI if they want to rise above it. He wrote that only a combination of “AI-driven and traditional” creative tools will be strong enough to compete with top-of-the-line generative models.
For the creators who have long spoken out about the threat of generative AI content, that answer will feel unsatisfactory. Perhaps, in 2026, Mosseri will be able to provide a more satisfying response. He concluded his Threads post by admitting that Instagram must continue evolving to slow down the creep of AI content, but as he put it, “tackling algorithmic transparency and control is probably best left for another essay.”
