Ever followed an account thinking there was a real person behind the face only to be tricked with AI? Instagram wants to remove this possibility from the platform.
Instagram announced on Monday that it is tightening the rules around accounts that use AI-generated people. From now on, the Meta-owned social media will require clearer labeling and promises to cut the visibility of profiles that hide their artificial origins.
The change comes as generative AI tools make it increasingly easy to create lifelike but entirely fake faces and whole fake personality profiles, which one of the world’s largest photo- and video-sharing social networks’ users have complained about discovering, often too late.
“Generative AI” refers to software capable of creating realistic images, video, or text from scratch, including faces and voices that look and sound convincingly human. Platforms like Instagram have recently started using “labels,” small tags on a profile, to flag when the content or the person shown isn’t real.
Under the update, Instagram is renaming its existing “AI creator” label applied to virtual influencers profiles to “AI-generated profile.” This change means to make it more immediately obvious to visitors when the person featured on an account isn’t human.
The platform is also reducing the reach of accounts that feature an AI-generated person but fail to apply that label. In theory, their content may no longer appear to non-followers in places such as Reels and Explore. Creators who previously used the older label will be prompted to review whether it still applies, and can remove it if it no longer does. Accounts that merely use AI tools as part of a creative process, without depicting a fake person as though they were real, do not need the label. So a human influencer who occasionally posts an AI-generated image isn’t suddenly supposed to have their entire account labeled “AI-generated profile.”
The company explained the reasoning for the update. People don’t want to follow what looks like a real person only to later learn it’s artificial, and they want that information upfront rather than discovering it by accident.
There is currently a broader concern in Washington over AI-generated likenesses. The Senate Judiciary Committee has advanced the NO FAKES Act, legislation that would create a federal legal right protecting a person’s voice and visual likeness from unauthorized AI replication. The bill’s backers argue it addresses something fundamental to personal identity, apart from a technical nuisance that might be used by criminals.
The concern extends past social media into financial fraud. AI-generated deepfake personas have increasingly been used to build convincing fake identities for loan and account fraud, complete with fabricated documents, correspondence, and even live video calls featuring synthetic faces and cloned voices.
