Instagram CEO Says AI Photos Are Growing Fast And He's Worried We'll Keep It -

We need a whole new approach to "trust signals" to know who to trust, says Adam Mosseri.

In his closing post for 2025, Instagram CEO Adam Mosser discusses the massive changes artificial intelligence will bring to photography, stressing that authenticity is increasingly elusive and offering thoughts on how creators, camera manufacturers, and Instagram itself must adapt.

"The main risk Instagram faces is that as the world moves faster, the platform doesn't keep pace. In 2026, a major change: authenticity becomes infinitely repeatable," Mosseri wrote in a post that takes the form of 20 slides of text - there are no images.(He also imitated an extended version in Threads).

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Mosseri said that AI makes it impossible to distinguish real photos from AI-generated images, and that more "astute creators will gravitate towards unproduced, unflattering images," so AI itself will follow photos that also rely on that "raw aesthetic."It will force us, he said, to change the way we approach jump photography.

"That's when we need to focus on who's saying what instead of what's being said," Moshiri said.But it takes us "years to catch up" and we come away from assuming that what we're seeing is real."It's uncomfortable — we trust our eyes with our genes."

On the technical side, Mosori predicted that camera equipment manufacturers would start offering ways to cryptographically sign photos to establish a chain of ownership, proving that photos are not created by artificial intelligence.

He also warned that camera manufacturers are going in the wrong direction by offering ways to help amateur photographers create polished images."A flattering image is easy to produce and boring to consume. People want content that is real."

Instagram and the need for “reliability signals”

Instagram is owned by Meta, which also owns Facebook and WhatsApp, and like those platforms, in 2025.Instagram has added AI features, which also surprised some users who saw AI versions of themselves in ads.Like other platforms, Instagram has struggled with an influx of AI-generated content, including Slope, which removes content from humans.

Check out the powerful AI image and video generators emerging in 2025, from Google's NanoBananas to OpenAI's Sora.

Mosseri said in the post that he hopes to address the issue of distinguishing between false and true by labeling "authentic media" and the importance of ranking content.

Mosseri listed the steps Instagram needs to take based on the need to "show credibility signals about who's posting so people can decide who to trust."

- Create traditional and AI-powered tools to help creators compete with fully AI-generated content.

- Accurately identify AI-generated content.

- Work with producers to verify authenticity in capture - not just chasing fakes, but fingerprinting real media.

- Improve originality ranking.

"Instagram needs to evolve in a number of ways," he said.