So, if you haven’t heard this one before, Meta has a "new" feature that nobody asked for, and this time, Instagram is going into its AI fantasies by adding a "Shop the Look" button. Now, it’s not a bad idea on paper, because basically, the AI is looking at a creator's photo and picking out clothes or furniture and suggesting things for you to go out and buy, but really, it’s just Instagram being that friend who sees you wearing a nice outfit and tells you that they saw something just like it at a thrift store for five bucks.
Obviously, creators are losing their minds over this, because can you imagine having spent years creating a brand on your unique sense of style and having Meta's AI go ahead and put a link to a cheap knockoff of something over your face? It’s not only a bad look, it’s a bad business model, especially if a creator has a deal with a high-end clothing company and the AI goes ahead and suggests a cheap knockoff of something they're wearing from a competitor company.
As a report from Bloomberg explains, creators are worried that this technology is destroying the relationship that they build with their fans, mostly because, when a fan clicks on the "Shop the Look" button, they assume that the creator is endorsing that product, when in reality, they are just being taken to Meta’s list of “close enough” products, and that is just another case of big tech breaking things without thought, and the thing that is broken is the reputation of the people that make the app worth using.
Meta seems to have forgotten that the “social” in social media comes from the real people, not just the pixels that a robot can identify, and by putting AI shopping above the people that make the content, they are treating their best users like free mannequins for a catalog. It is a bold move to alienate the people that keep the users from deleting the app, but maybe the robots will start taking selfies and posting them soon.
The solution is, apparently, very simple: just give the creators a “No Thanks” button or let them choose the tags that are being used, and the issue is fixed, but we all know that Meta is not very good at that, and there is a growing sense that Meta is so busy winning the AI race that they no longer care if the humans on the app are having a good time, and that is a very quick way to ruin a social network.
With the low compensation for the creators and the fact that our feeds are full of AI junk, it’s not looking so great, and it creates a weird world where Instagram needs the creators to be cool, but the creators continue to give the power to a robot that can’t tell the difference between high fashion and a bargain bin.
If Instagram wants to be a mall, perhaps the owners of the shops should be the ones to decide what’s in the window, or perhaps they’ll find that the best creators move to a place that doesn’t try to sell cheap copies behind their backs.
