• by Colin Kirkland , Yesterday

By renaming the label for AI creator personas to "AI-generated profile," Instagram has announced it will restrict the reach of unlabeled profiles that feature AI-generated people, reducing their ability to monetize. 

Designed to improve in-app transparency while adhering to regulatory pressures surrounding AI-generated content, Instagram’s label change is designed to “make it more clear to people when a profile features an AI-generated person rather than a human,” the company’s announcement states.

“We’ve heard that people don’t like seeing a profile that seems human, only to find out later that the person featured is AI-generated,” the announcement continues. “They want to know when a profile features an AI-generated person.”

Instagram first launched its “AI creator” label in May, which expanded the platform’s “AI info” tag appearing beside AI-generated content across the Feed, Reels, and Explore tabs. At the time, the company said that labeling an AI creator profile would not impact how the recommendations algorithm would distribute content. 

Now, the social media company is telling accounts that feature an AI persona to add the new “AI-generated profile” label, or else the algorithm will impact their reach – deeming their content “non-recommendable” – and subsequent monetization efforts. 

Creators are using AI tools to help generate content but continue to feature their human selves do not need to add the new label to their accounts.  

Meta continues to spend billions of dollars on AI development, including AI chatbots and agents, but has begun taking steps to encourage “original” content on Instagram, recently alerting its recommendations algorithm to discourage aggregators from reposting others’ content. 

Notably, Meta’s definition of original content doesn’t discriminate against AI-generated content and AI-generated personas. 

By inviting creators to better clarify the makeup of their accounts, Meta is promoting monetization for AI-generated personas, despite recent reports detailing predatory behavior from AI-generated creators posing as humans.

Last month, Wired discovered that AI-generated male influencers posing as human creators were promoting a gay dating app on Instagram. Around the same time, The New York Timesuncovered hundreds of AI-generated wellness creators acting as humans while promoting health supplements.

Prior to these investigations, The Guardian also found that a myriad of AI creators have been promoting brands and apps on Instagram without disclosing their non-humanness.