AI is the new social media

I was working on a blog post about how AI would eventually replace social media when OpenAI just... did it. They launched Sora 2 on September 30th with an iOS app that's basically TikTok, except 100% of the content is AI-generated: https://openai.com/index/sora-2/

You literally can't upload anything from your camera roll. Everything in the feed is AI-generated videos. And it makes perfect sense.

Your feed is already mostly AI

Think about it: when you scroll Instagram or Facebook these days, how much of what you see is actually made by humans anymore? Those perfectly composed photos of attractive people? AI. Cute animals doing suspiciously perfect things? AI. Outrage bait? Definitely AI.

Research shows 71% of social media images are now AI-generated. Facebook is at 22% AI content. LinkedIn is over 50% AI for longer posts. And most people can't even tell the difference.

So we're already scrolling through mostly AI-generated stuff, just mixed in with human posts on platforms that are desperately trying to keep us addicted.

Sora skips the middleman

This is why Sora is interesting. Why bother going through Facebook's algorithm showing you AI slop when you could just... get the AI content directly?

From a technical standpoint, Sora 2 is genuinely impressive. It's not just generating random video, it actually simulates physics. If a basketball player misses a shot, the ball bounces off the backboard instead of magically teleporting into the hoop like older models would do. It generates 1080p video with synced audio, handles realistic lighting and motion, and can even put you in the videos with their "Cameos" feature.

The wild part is OpenAI claims they're building it to prevent doomscrolling. They published a whole philosophy document about optimizing for creativity instead of passive consumption. The feed prioritizes content with "remix potential" rather than just whatever keeps you scrolling longest. You can set time limits, steer the feed with natural language, get wellbeing check-ins.

This is obviously just PR. They will definitely optimize for doomscrolling/addiction in the long run. They just don't (yet) have the resources to run endless feeds.

Zuck saw this coming

Mark Zuckerberg is spending $60-65 billion on AI infrastructure in 2025 alone because he sees where this is going. On Meta's earnings calls, he literally said AI-generated content is the inevitable "third epoch" of feeds, after friends and creators.

He's already testing feeds that are entirely AI-generated content. They launched one called "Vibes" last year. AI-driven recommendations increased time on Facebook by 8% and Instagram by 6% in a single year. Meta AI hit 700 million users and they're projecting a billion soon.

The guy who built Facebook is betting that social media feeds will be mostly AI content soon, and that the real "social" part has already moved to private messaging. The feed is just a discovery engine for AI content at this point.

The future

Here's what I think happens: AI models get really, really good at predicting what makes each individual person scroll. Like, better than human creators could ever be. You don't need to batch-produce content for a general audience anymore. You generate the exact video that would hook you specifically, right now, based on your recent behavior.