For better or for worse, AI bots are slowly taking over the internet, with AI tools generating content, which is then reprocessed by other AI tools, to feed AI responses from their own AI systems.
That means that over time the internet becomes a copy of a copy of a copy, losing the rich detail and nuance of the original content in favor of an increasing flood of AI sloppiness.
That’s why this is such an interesting shift.
This week, 404 Media published a report explaining how Instagram uses AI-generated post summaries to improve their rankings in Google Search.
As you can see in this example, the description “meet the rabbit who loves bananas…” was not written by the post author, but instead added by Meta AI, to ensure a better search ranking for this post.
And the captions are actually much longer than that. 404 Media found another example which read:
“Seattle’s cosplay photography is a wealth of inspiration for fans of the genre. Check out these real-life cosplay locations and photos captured by @mrdangphotos. From costumes to locations, discover how to recreate these looks and capture your own cosplay moments in Seattle.”
None of this was written by a human, it was generated by Meta AI, which Meta confirmed in an explanation to 404 Media.
Meta said that recently began using AI to generate titles for posts that appear in search engine results, to help people better understand the content.
While it seems pretty clear that helping people isn’t the main focus here, the goal of these more comprehensive, keyword-rich descriptions is Google itself, to maximize the discoverability of IG content.
So this is essentially content written by AI to engage Google’s AI systems and improve search results.
Is this really where we want the internet to go, with AI bots communicating with each other, adapting to each other’s code and determining what is most relevant, based on their digital understanding?
That’s a less human internet and a less human-centric experience. But it makes sense for Meta to do it, and if it can automate a process to get more users to its apps, it will.
It just feels like another example of the AI Ouroboros effect, where bots essentially eat themselves over and over again to game their own systems.
Of course, there are also concerns about misinterpretation, and these summaries provide misleading information that is not what the author of the message intended. Meta will claim this will improve over time, but there’s no way it can understand why someone posted something and get that caption right every time.
I guess the counter then would be that this will get more people looking at these posts, which is a better outcome for the creator anyway, but it still feels like a step towards a worse experience, through regurgitated, repackaged and recycled code tricks designed purely to game another AI system.
And it will only get worse. A recent report suggests so more than 50% of articles on the internet are now generated by artificial intelligenceas people look for more ways to capitalize on the earning potential of AI tools, largely through unlicensed, unapproved replication.
And again, as more AI content is pumped out, more AI content goes back into the meat grinder, creating this new supply of misunderstood, diluted, and eroded human input.
At what point do AI tools become so valuable that they are no longer useful in a creative context? And if that’s the case, what does that mean for the market cap of generative AI as a product?
It also strengthens my opposition to social platforms making it so easy for anyone to create posts with AI InStream. Social media is just that: it’s supposed to be ‘social’, about connecting people. You could argue the definition of “social” in this regard, and whether interacting with an AI entity qualifies, but the fundamental foundation of social media is rooted in human connection.
Which AI bots can’t replicate. Sure, they can give you something like that, but an AI bot hasn’t yet gone through the experiences that led to it creating a work of art that really resonates.
That’s the whole point of art and creativity, to celebrate what people can achieve, through passion and dedication. Yet tech bros seem so eager to replace that with a single button you can press to do the same thing, without any hassle.
Is that what people really want?
I suspect if you think so, you’ll be disappointed with the end result.
#Instagram #generate #SEO #summaries #posts