Why Creators Matter More Than Ever

Instagram has reinvented itself before. The curated grid gave way to Reels. Public sharing migrated to DMs. Adam Mosseri's year-end memo signals the next shift—but this one is different. Previous changes were about user behavior. This one is about culture. The ground is shifting underneath everyone, not just Instagram.

The curated, perfectionist aesthetic everyone Millennial and older long associated with Instagram recently gave way to something rawer. Blurry shoe shots. Unflattering candids. Imperfection became proof, because when AI generates flawless imagery, looking too good is the tell.

But that defense has an expiration date.

"Relatively quickly, AI will create any aesthetic you like, including an imperfect one that presents as authentic." The raw look that signals "real" today will be trivially fakeable tomorrow. This is the forever march: whatever visual shorthand we use to signal authenticity, AI learns to replicate it. Polished looked fake, so we trusted raw. Raw will look fake soon.

Then what?

Mosseri says we stop trusting what we see and start trusting who posted it. Creators become more important than ever—not despite AI, but because of it.

Instagram will surface more context about accounts. Camera manufacturers will cryptographically sign images at capture, as fingerprinting real media becomes more practical than chasing fakes.

For us marketers, this means showing our work.

First, behind-the-scenes content becomes more valuable—not because it looks authentic, but because when creative processes increasingly become a click of a button, showing real creative struggle gets more fascinating, not less. Document everything: the messy whiteboard, the rejected concepts, the raw footage. A time-lapse of your team iterating. These require sustained human presence over time.

Second, build trust signals before platforms do it for you. Transparency about your process, consistent voice, verifiable identity, and owned audiences become your competitive edge.

Third, the creative brief must answer a new question: not “what should we make?” but “what could only we make?” The answer won’t be a product shot. It’ll be a perspective, a story, a relationship with your audience that AI can’t replicate because it wasn’t there for the moments that built it.

One AI image is easy. A consistent creative journey is not.

— Torsten & Peter

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