Instagram Head Says You Can No Longer Trust Your Eyes to Judge What's Real

Instagram head Adam Mosseri concluded 2025 with a 20-slide deep dive exploring the profound implications of the emerging era of "infinite synthetic content"—a landscape where the line between authentic and artificial content is increasingly blurred. He also reflected on the platform’s earlier, more personal feed experience, which he says has been “dead” for years.

Last year, Sarah Jeong of The Verge wrote: “...the default assumption about a photo will become ‘this is fake,’ because creating convincingly realistic counterfeit images is now easier than ever.” Mosseri ultimately agrees with this sentiment.

For most of my life, I could confidently assume that a photo or video was an accurate record of a real moment. Today, that’s clearly no longer the case—and we may spend years adapting to this new reality.
Our mindset must shift from default trust in visual evidence to one of critical skepticism. We’ll need to ask: Who shared this? And why? This transition will undoubtedly feel uncomfortable—after all, humans are naturally inclined to believe what they see with their own eyes.

You can view the full set of slides at the end of this article. According to Mosseri, the path forward for Instagram and similar platforms involves building best-in-class creative tools, introducing clear labeling for AI-generated content, verifying authentic original posts, highlighting creator credibility indicators, and continuously refining recommendation systems to prioritize genuine content.