AI Is Upending the Lives of People Who Do Social Media Professionally

The central question for professional creators is what happens when making content becomes free or nearly free. Rachel Carton said AI is often entering social-media teams through bosses who mandate its use and defer to its judgments. In her interviews with about 100 marketers, one boss used Claude to decide whether an employee’s meme was funny; another accepted ideas only when they came from Copilot. Carton described some teams’ approach as a “free for all,” without shared principles, training, or guardrails.

Carton said she has not heard of marketers succeeding with AI-generated captions or post ideas and does not recommend that approach. Taylor Lorenz uses AI for assistive work, including SEO captions and resizing images in Canva, but prefers to write in her own voice. Carton argued that audiences may read a brand’s creative effort on social media as a signal of the effort it puts into its product, so AI imagery can suggest that the company is cutting corners elsewhere. Lorenz added that people may enjoy AI content when they know what it is, but resent feeling tricked; Carton contrasted skepticism toward brand imagery with the sharing of low-stakes AI memes such as Fruit Love Island.

AI’s effect on creators depends partly on what they make. People may use AI instead of creators for practical instructions, such as how to fix a dishwasher, while work that is harder to replicate may retain value. Creators can also use AI to produce compelling work that is itself difficult to copy. Joe Wiesenthal raised the possibility that audiences might stop caring whether marketing and social content is AI-generated within three to five years—or even three months. That possibility remains uncertain, but the speed and volume of AI publishing already create pressure: one speaker said AI accounts can post around 50 times a day, repeatedly testing Instagram for a hit, and estimated that two or three of the 20 most-viewed Reels ever were recently AI-generated.

The abundance of AI content also creates a trust problem when imitation obscures how something was made. One speaker warned that AI videos styled to look like behind-the-scenes footage can confuse viewers, and called monetizing that confusion a short-term gain with long-term costs. For audience growth, the same speaker recommended building a recognizable throughline that feels like a TV show, as social media becomes more serialized and entertainment-focused. A cooking account using Meta glasses reportedly reached about 500,000 followers in two or three months by posting daily recordings of the cook preparing food. The speaker advised against trying to become a lifestyle influencer in 2026, citing declining interest in sharing everyday life and anger toward lifestyle influencers.

Platform formats and social habits shape what creators should prioritize. One speaker described Instagram’s guidance as using carousels and Reels to reach non-followers, single-image posts to serve existing audiences, and Stories and DMs to build community; in that account, non-follower views help fuel the algorithm. Adam O’Sari said social connection increasingly happens through DMs that share something because it reminds someone of a friend, rather than through posts about family or personal updates. This points toward content that is both discoverable and easy to pass along, while making personal posting a less reliable center of social connection.

AI is also changing how talent can reuse recorded material. CAA’s “vault” draws on stars’ recorded content: currently, a star typically spends a day recording, after which AI can adjust takes or tailor material for different audiences. One speaker expects this kind of AI-assisted editing and audience customization to become common. Speakers disagreed about whether chatbots will pull people away from social media. One said chatbot conversations can feel more pleasant than comment threads because they avoid insults; another thought that concern fits Twitter better than TikTok or Instagram, which many people use like television. A further view was that people logging off poses a greater threat than chatbots replacing scrolling, because chatbots serve a different function from entertainment and contact with real people.