Snapchat won’t let creators monetize fully AI-generated videos, but it still wants you to please, please, please use its AI tools

Every major social media platform is run by a major technology company–and that’s never been more apparent than in the era of AI slop.

Google and YouTube, Meta and Facebook/Instagram, ByteDance and TikTok…All of these parent companies are speedrunning their attempts to make money with generative AI, while also contending with the undeniable impact gen AI is having on their UGC platforms.

Snapchat is the latest company to write this awkward crossroads into policy. Earlier this year, it poked fun at Instagram by renaming Spotlight–its TikTok-esque feed that’s supposed to collect “best of” content from Snapchatters (and pay them for it)–to “Reals” for April Fools’ Day.

Post-joke, it explained that the point was to give “a playful nod to the authentic, unfiltered content our community shares every day. While the name change wasn’t real, the idea behind it is.”

And, as part of remaining “Real,” Snapchat said it would tweak Spotlight so scrollers would “see fewer synthetic AI videos,” with the feed returning to Snapchat’s roots as a platform with “candid moments, spontaneous reactions, and everyday experiences shared by real people across Snapchat.”

Now, Snapchat says it’s taking things one step further by blocking fully AI-generated videos from being recommended on Spotlight. That means creators making fully AI-generated videos can no longer submit them, and can no longer be paid for them through the platform’s monetization program.

“As low-quality, repetitive, AI-generated content becomes increasingly common across the internet, we want Spotlight to remain a place where people can discover authentic creativity from real people, because we believe there’s enduring value in rewarding original perspectives, personal storytelling, and the moments that people choose to create and share themselves,” Snapchat said in a company blog post.

But before you think Snapchat is becoming some great bastion of anti-AI, let us give you context.

The key word in this update is fully. Creators can no longer submit fully AI-generated videos.

They are, however, allowed to submit partially AI-generated videos. And generating those videos will be made easier by the fact that Snapchat offers (in its own words) “many” features that are “powered by generative AI.”

Those features include “AI Lenses, My AI, AI Snaps in Memories, AI Snaps in creative tools, personalized titles or chapter labels for some Featured Stories in Memories, and generating songs from Chat messages.”

In its blog post about this update, Snapchat took time to make sure people know that barring fully generated videos from Spotlight is “not about rejecting AI.”

“We know that for some, AI plays an important part of the creative process, and we believe it can unlock incredible new forms of expression,” it siad. “So, content that has been enhanced or edited using Snapchat’s AI creative tools will continue to be eligible for recommendation and importantly include transparency indicators.”

So, yeah. Snapchat might not accept fully generated videos, but it’s still fully embracing AI–especially if creators are using its in-house tools. Because that’s the state of the world right now.

Like we mentioned above, Snapchat is just the latest platform to issue more rules around gen AI content. YouTube has been incrementally dealing with slop for months, and last month clarified that it doesn’t allow videos with AI-generated “experts” in important areas like medicine and finance. LinkedIn also woke up recently and added a button for users to report content that seems like AI slop. That button (and LinkedIn’s moderation system) will have work cut out, considering recent data from Pangram suggested as much as 41% of LinkedIn content is LLM extrusion.