The Morning After: Instagram boss says ‘more practical to fingerprint real media than fake media’
Instagram’s top exec Adam Mosseri expects AI content to overtake non-AI imagery and discussed the implications for the platform and users.
Mosseri shared his thoughts on broader trends he expects to shape Instagram in 2026. “Everything that made creators matter — the ability to be real, to connect, to have a voice that couldn’t be faked — is now suddenly accessible to anyone with the right tools,” he wrote. “The feeds are starting to fill up with synthetic everything.” He added: “There is already a growing number of people who believe, as I do, that it will be more practical to fingerprint real media than fake media.”
Mosseri doesn’t address the risk that this will alienate many photographers and other creators who have already grown frustrated with the app — it looks like Instagram is leaning into the AI firehose. And hey: whatever keeps its users using it.
Mosseri suggests many complaints stem from an outdated vision of what Instagram even is. The feed of “polished” square images, he says, “is dead.” Instead of trying to “make everyone look like a professional photographer,” Mosseri says that more “raw” and “unflattering” images will be how creators can prove they are real — not AI.
Or you could leave Instagram?
— Mat Smith
The other big stories (and deals) this morning
CES 2026: What to expect
First up, Samsung.
CES kicks off this weekend. We’ve got a full preview that we’ll update in the run-up to the full show, but the major tech announcements will likely center on chips (ah, AI) and new TV tech (ah, CES). Intel is finally taking the wraps off its Panther Lake (Core Ultra Series 3) chips — the first to debut on the company’s 18A process. With a promised 50 percent performance boost, Intel needs to prove it can still compete with NVIDIA and AMD. Meanwhile, NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang will deliver a keynote at the Las Vegas show, while AMD’s Lisa Su teases Ryzen 9000-series refreshes and more.
This year’s TV obsession is Micro RGB. Samsung is going big — literally — with a Micro RGB lineup spanning 55 to 115 inches. LG, meanwhile, has its own Micro RGB Evo panels, boasting over a thousand dimming zones for that elusive “perfect” contrast. We’ll be on the ground in Vegas to separate the legitimate, exciting new tech from the marketing fluff and AI assistant tchotchkes. And remember me mentioning the celebrity CES parade? Well, will.i.am is back at CES, this time curiously involved with LG’s portable speakers. Check it off your CES bingo card.
The era of foldable handheld consoles is coming
OneXSugar Wallet has a 4:3 foldable screen and a terrible name.
OneXPlayer is quickly establishing itself as a company unafraid to get weird as hell. (Take, for example, its pseudo-foldable dual-screen console). This time, while it initially appears to be another standard dual-screen model, the Android-powered OneXSugar Wallet instead uses a single foldable screen. The OneXSugar Wallet was teased in a 54-second video on the Chinese video-sharing platform Bilibili. Retro Handhelds reports the Wallet uses an 8.01-inch OLED with a 2,480 x 1,860 resolution. That’s a 4:3 aspect ratio when unfolded, making it very retro-gaming friendly.
Given the foldable screen tech, the price might not be. OneXSugar hasn’t shared that detail yet.
This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/general/the-morning-after-engadget-newsletter-121544371.html?src=rss
Instagram’s top exec Adam Mosseri expects AI content to overtake non-AI imagery and discussed the implications for the platform and users. Mosseri shared his thoughts on broader trends he expects to shape Instagram in 2026. “Everything that made creators matter — the ability to be real, to connect, to have…
