One common complaint about Instagram, and social media in general, is that it breeds insecurity by presenting a false impression of other people’s lives as better than they really are—only the best of times. And heavy editing of body image is known to contribute to body dissatisfaction even when people know what they are seeing is not the full picture. Instagram will soon make that situation worse by allowing users to completely transform their videos using artificial intelligence.
In the teaser shared by Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram managed to completely change his appearance, in one shot he turns himself into a sound puppet, and in another he transports Mosseri from his office to a snowy mountain with a fur coat. In one case, he managed to place a hippopotamus behind him that jumped up and looked at the camera.
“Many of you create the amazing content that makes Instagram what it is, and we want to give you more tools to help realize your ideas,” Mosseri said. “You should be able to do whatever you want with your videos. You should be able to change your outfit or change the context you are sitting in… Anything you can think of.”
The new feature, which will be available sometime in 2025, is powered by Meta’s Movie Gen AI model. The announcement comes shortly after both OpenAI and Google DeepMind unveiled their video generation models. By making these tools available on Instagram, Meta is showing that productive AI can have instant applications within its own apps. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he wants to infuse the company’s full lineup of apps with AI, including content in feeds tailored specifically to each user’s interests.
Of course, while early demos of video production models were promising, they are not perfect. OpenAI’s Sora introduced many of the issues you’d expect, such as objects disappearing and faces changing from view after a few seconds. Mosseri only showed one-second demos of the Movie Gen AI, so while they look impressive, we’ll have to see if they up their quality with longer clips.
There are certainly interesting ways to generate AI within Instagram that can be used in fun and exciting ways. The question is whether those are more than bad. Mental health concerns aside, AI has already filled Facebook feeds with fake photos that many older or gullible users don’t believe are real, and it’s too early to tell what damage it will ultimately cause.