Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Well, let's head back
Speaker 1: to the screen Time main stage, the theater here at
Speaker 1: screen Time and to Adam Asari, he's the head of Instagram.
Speaker 1: Over at Meta Platforms.
Speaker 2: He's speaking with Blueberg News.
Speaker 1: Is Kurt Wagner mister Beast. Everyone in this audience already
Speaker 1: knows who that is. I don't need to explain who
Speaker 1: mister Beast is. He posted actually on Threads. This was
Speaker 1: his Threads post, which is also your platform, that it's
Speaker 1: scary times for creators because of these gen AI tools
Speaker 1: that are coming out. What do you think should creators
Speaker 1: be scared as the scary times?
Speaker 2: I think things are changing really quickly, and I think
Speaker 2: that means that a lot of us, whether you're using
Speaker 2: a platform like Jimmy is or you're building a platform
Speaker 2: like we do on our team, are having to think
Speaker 2: about how we need to evolve how we do what
Speaker 2: we do. The jobs are changing, and so I don't
Speaker 2: think that technology from the creator's side is going to
Speaker 2: place creativity. I think it's going to change who can
Speaker 2: be creative. I think it's going to change how people
Speaker 2: tell their stories. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: I think that people have creators and creatives. They have
Speaker 2: their taste, they have their processes, they have their judgments,
Speaker 2: they have their cultural commentary, and they're going to use
Speaker 2: those in different ways than before. Because to produce a
Speaker 2: video isn't going to require what Jimmy has historically done
Speaker 2: with Mister Beast and these huge sets and these amazing
Speaker 2: elaborate production teams. It's going to be something that anybody
Speaker 2: can do with access to the right model.
Speaker 1: So on the one hand, it will make certain things easier,
Speaker 1: it will lower the bar for what it takes to,
Speaker 1: you know, produce maybe something that feels highly like produced.
Speaker 1: Does this create more creators? Does this create an upper
Speaker 1: crust of creators, you know, because there's now so many
Speaker 1: more people who can do this.
Speaker 2: I think it'll mean that today's creators, if they lean
Speaker 2: into the tools, are the ones who do will be
Speaker 2: able to create more or even better content. But I
Speaker 2: think it also means that they're going to be people
Speaker 2: who couldn't be creators before who can now actually produce
Speaker 2: content of a certain quality or at a certain scale.
Speaker 2: But it also means they're going to be bad actors
Speaker 2: who try to leverage these technologies for nefarious purposes as well.
Speaker 2: So it's going to be well if you think a
Speaker 2: big step back, what the Internet did, among other things,
Speaker 2: was allow almost anyone to become a publisher, right, reducing
Speaker 2: the cost of distributing content to essentially zero. And what
Speaker 2: some of these generative AI models look like they're going
Speaker 2: to do is they're going to reduce the cost of
Speaker 2: producing content to basically zero. So that will be a
Speaker 2: multiplier effect on the things that we're already seeing, which
Speaker 2: is that there's more people producing more content and reaching
Speaker 2: more people, and there's a lot of good and bad
Speaker 2: that comes downstream from that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, as someone who creates an algorithm and intended
Speaker 1: to show people things that they want to see, do
Speaker 1: you anticipate I don't know if you can break down
Speaker 1: what the average person has seen right now in terms
Speaker 1: of stuff that's AI generated versus you know, maybe more
Speaker 1: traditional human generated. But what's that going to look like
Speaker 1: in a year or in five years. Are we going
Speaker 1: to be seeing a feed just full of AI stuff
Speaker 1: or is there a human element that's going to be
Speaker 1: important here?
Speaker 2: Well? Today on the big platforms like Instagram and TikTok
Speaker 2: and Facebook and YouTube, I think there's actually a lot
Speaker 2: of hybrid content. And too often we talk about synthetic
Speaker 2: content and organic content and never the chee shop meet.
Speaker 2: But there's a lot of content where AI is part
Speaker 2: of the workflow, right, Like you might not even know it.
Speaker 2: Might be whatever app you're using to do color correction,
Speaker 2: might be using models to do so, you know, stamp
Speaker 2: tool and photoshop in the old days to get rid
Speaker 2: of a pimple, those types of things. But that line
Speaker 2: is going to be more and more blurred, so it's
Speaker 2: going to be little bit less like what is organic
Speaker 2: content and what is AI synthetic content and what the
Speaker 2: percentages are. I think it's going to be actually more
Speaker 2: in the middle than pure synthetic content for a while.
Speaker 2: But you will also see experiences that are purely AI, right.
Speaker 2: You see this in the last two weeks with Vibes
Speaker 2: in the medi app and with Soa too from open Ai.
Speaker 2: So I think you're going to see both.
Speaker 1: You mentioned there's a lot of potential for bad actors
Speaker 1: out there. We talked a few weeks ago, actually Instagram
Speaker 1: announced three billion users and we had a conversation then,
Speaker 1: and one of the things you said was, you know,
Speaker 1: you rely especially with AI on a lot of self reporting,
Speaker 1: people have to sort of let their audience know I
Speaker 1: used AI for this. A lot of people don't do that.
Speaker 1: I'm curious what responsibility you think Instagram and Meta have
Speaker 1: versus how much of it is on the content creator themselves,
Speaker 1: Like do you need to be identifying that something is
Speaker 1: AI and alerting the audience to it or is it
Speaker 1: all on the creator.
Speaker 2: I think that we can do more to identify content
Speaker 2: that was created with AI. We actually when we first
Speaker 2: did it, we were doing we were using the xf
Speaker 2: data and a bunch of people got mad at us
Speaker 2: because Photoshop was exporting content and the AI was part
Speaker 2: of the flow, and then we were saying it was
Speaker 2: AI content. But the creator was like, this is an
Speaker 2: AI content. But if you actually looked at how the flow.
Speaker 1: Was made, they thought Photoshop was AI.
Speaker 2: They had used some tool and Photoshop that triggered that. Okay,
Speaker 2: I think it was Photoshop, or maybe it was Premiere
Speaker 2: I forget which AAP. So it's sort of a delicate matter.
Speaker 2: For what is worth though, I think that trying to
Speaker 2: automatically label everything that was created in some part with AI,
Speaker 2: particularly when there's a lot of hybrid content where it's
Speaker 2: only part of the process is a little bit of
Speaker 2: it's not a fool's erran, but it's it's maybe the
Speaker 2: wrong focus. I think what's gonna happened quickly is that
Speaker 2: you can still kind of tell when content was created
Speaker 2: by AI. Not always but usually pretty good.
Speaker 1: It's hard, it's hard, harder.
Speaker 2: It's getting harder, and I think pretty soon it'll be
Speaker 2: almost impossible. And so I think what we need to
Speaker 2: do is, sure, we can work more on labeling, but
Speaker 2: we also need to provide more context for people to
Speaker 2: make more informed decisions about what to believe in to
Speaker 2: not so like the way you think about, you know, literacy.
Speaker 2: For like my kids, my kids are young, they're nine
Speaker 2: to seven and five. I need them to understand as
Speaker 2: they grow up and they get exposed to the Internet
Speaker 2: that just because they're seeing a video of something doesn't
Speaker 2: mean it actually happened. And they when I grew up
Speaker 2: and I saw a video, I could assume that that
Speaker 2: was a capture of a moment that happened in the
Speaker 2: real world. And what they're going to need to do
Speaker 2: is they're going to need to think about who is
Speaker 2: saying it, who's sharing it in this case, and what
Speaker 2: are their incentives and why might they be saying it?
Speaker 2: And there's going to be way more importance if you're
Speaker 2: going to make good decisions about what to trust and
Speaker 2: what to allow to inform your own opinions, we're gonna
Speaker 2: have to shift emphasis away from the content itself and
Speaker 2: not to ignore it, but just away from it and
Speaker 2: put more on who's saying it and why they might
Speaker 2: be saying it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you're doing that as an involved parent.
Speaker 2: But as a platform, we can provide context too, right,
Speaker 2: and we do today, but we can do more like today.
Speaker 2: If you go to my profile, you can go to
Speaker 2: about this profile. You can see how long I've had
Speaker 2: this profile, what country I'm based in, how many times
Speaker 2: I've changed my user name, a series of signals that
Speaker 2: you can use to decide how much you want to
Speaker 2: trust or not trust. Or maybe it's not even about
Speaker 2: positive miniccative. Maybe it's just about my political bias or
Speaker 2: my financial bias or any other kind of bias of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it feels like it's evolving. Obviously the Instagram app
Speaker 1: is evolving as well. That was a big part of
Speaker 1: our last conversation. I think people still think of I
Speaker 1: shouldn't say I certainly still part of me thinks of
Speaker 1: Instagram as the feed of beautiful, curated photos and videos
Speaker 1: like that is maybe it's certainly an older way of
Speaker 1: thinking about it. You're leaning very hard into this sort
Speaker 1: of newer version of Instagram, which is DMS, stories, reels.
Speaker 1: Walk us through a little bit about where your priorities
Speaker 1: are with Instagram right now, Like, is the traditional feed
Speaker 1: a thing in.
Speaker 2: The past at this point, it's certainly changing. All the
Speaker 2: growth in Instagram over the last five years or more
Speaker 2: has really come from dms and reels and recommendations and stories.
Speaker 2: But we started as a feed of hypersaturated photos, you know,
Speaker 2: glossy landscapes. You guys can all picture the aesthetic, and
Speaker 2: that's just not how people use Instagram anymore. Our biggest
Speaker 2: risk is that the world evolves, we don't keep up
Speaker 2: and we just become irrelevant. If we hadn't built dms
Speaker 2: and stories and reels, you wouldn't be interviewing me on
Speaker 2: stage today. We wouldn't be relevant enough to show up
Speaker 2: at screen time. But moving it forward is also tricky.
Speaker 2: People get frustrated when you have an when they have
Speaker 2: an experience that they use for call it half an
Speaker 2: hour a day, and then someone comes and changes it
Speaker 2: without asking them. So it's a balance. But we have
Speaker 2: to because if we didn't, we would be in trouble.
Speaker 2: I mean, like I'll do like probably shouldn't do this
Speaker 2: because nobody can see the audience on camera. But how
Speaker 2: many of you use Instagram? It's okay if you don't
Speaker 2: raise your hand really high so I can see. Cool.
Speaker 2: How many of you keep your hand up? Have messaged
Speaker 2: someone in the last two days? Great? How many? Now?
Speaker 2: How many of you have posted a story in the
Speaker 2: last couple of days? All right, so maybe about half?
Speaker 2: From about it was like eighty percent. How many of
Speaker 2: you posted something to feed in the last two days?
Speaker 1: Those watching, the number of hands is very minimal.
Speaker 2: We have seven.
Speaker 1: We went from like almost everybody to seven.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's how Instagram is used. We connect with friends,
Speaker 2: we explore our interests. But we so by seeing a
Speaker 2: reel and sending it to someone who we think might
Speaker 2: enjoy it, or responding to a story, or sharing a
Speaker 2: fleeting moment, or posting a note. Actually, if you're you know,
Speaker 2: younger than I am, it's posting to your feed is
Speaker 2: just not the primary way people express themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's evidenced by some of the stuff you're doing.
Speaker 1: So I want to get into this sort of test
Speaker 1: you're doing with reels. You launch an iPad app, which
Speaker 1: people have been clamoring for for a long time. If
Speaker 1: you the iPad ad opens directly into reels, so it
Speaker 1: doesn't open into the traditional feed, you're now kicked into
Speaker 1: this short form video experience. You're testing that in India
Speaker 1: as well. Ye is this the future? Like a year
Speaker 1: from now, are we all going to open up Instagram
Speaker 1: and instead of seeing that feed, are we just going
Speaker 1: to be kicked into you know what? Maybe feels like.
Speaker 2: TikTok so when you know Yeah, So the test in
Speaker 2: India right now is an opt in and it opens.
Speaker 2: You have stories at the top still, but if you
Speaker 2: scroll down, it scrolls into reels. But if you look
Speaker 2: at the reels tab and the main feed tab, there
Speaker 2: are two primary differences. The one is full screen media.
Speaker 2: At times you see one piece, one photo or video
Speaker 2: at a time, and that is the reels tab, whereas
Speaker 2: Feed is free scrolling and then reels has more videos
Speaker 2: and more recommendations and feed has less, but they both
Speaker 2: have recommendations. They both have photos, they both have carousels,
Speaker 2: and they both have videos. It's just a balance, and
Speaker 2: so it's really a design difference and then a ranking difference.
Speaker 2: I think just swapping them doesn't really make sense. But
Speaker 2: I think that if a more immersive media is really
Speaker 2: driving all our growth, if we can figure out a
Speaker 2: way to transition the app to that being the experience
Speaker 2: that you swipe into, then that would probably be a
Speaker 2: good thing if we can make it happen. The questions
Speaker 2: can we make it happen responsibly without you pissing everybody off,
Speaker 2: without really hurting the business because the monetization efficiency of
Speaker 2: video is lower by finding the right balance. It's probably
Speaker 2: not ranked exactly as one is or the other is today,
Speaker 2: but that is definitely something I want to explore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, from the outside, it's hard not to
Speaker 1: look at that and think tik TikTok is driving this
Speaker 1: change for you. How much do you think about TikTok
Speaker 1: as a It's obviously a major competitor, But I'm wondering
Speaker 1: how much something like this is driven maybe by what
Speaker 1: you're seeing from competition.
Speaker 2: Curious about this data, what is this data aduls eighteen
Speaker 2: to thirty four average audience by hour. I don't know
Speaker 2: what that means. Cool. Definitely think about TikTok, Definitely think
Speaker 2: about YouTube. Definitely think about Snapchat. I mean, the immersive
Speaker 2: viewer is pre dates TikTok, right. I think Cacao Stories
Speaker 2: pioneered the stories format, which was an immersive viewer. Yeah
Speaker 2: in Korea. It was popularized by Snapchat worldwide, so they
Speaker 2: should get a lot of credit for that. TikTok was
Speaker 2: applying that immersive viewer that native first experience too short
Speaker 2: from video, and they should get a lot of credit
Speaker 2: for that. And now obviously you've got YouTube shorts, Instagram
Speaker 2: real Facebook reels and the rest of it. We think
Speaker 2: a lot about TikTok because they are really good at
Speaker 2: what they do. They are better than I think the
Speaker 2: rest of the industry at this point at a couple
Speaker 2: things at breaking new talent at.
Speaker 1: In like identifying up and coming creators. Is that what
Speaker 1: you mean?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So the way it works is when you're ranking
Speaker 2: content and you want to drive engagement, it's easier to
Speaker 2: drive engagement by showing content that you know lots of
Speaker 2: people like than to try and discover content that you
Speaker 2: might love that you didn't even know about yet, that
Speaker 2: might be from a really small name or small creator.
Speaker 2: And that's called exploration based ranking, when you try to
Speaker 2: literally almost test out things to see if they have legs,
Speaker 2: if there's an audience for them. They are really good
Speaker 2: at exploration based ranking. We're closing that gap, but we're
Speaker 2: not all the way there yet. YouTube isn't actually great
Speaker 2: at that. YouTube is the best I think in the
Speaker 2: market at paying out creators through revshare. That's because they're
Speaker 2: still mostly long form and long form. They've done a
Speaker 2: really good job with their in or their pre rules
Speaker 2: and their mid roles. But I think TikTok has been
Speaker 2: like really culturally relevant because they've been able to break
Speaker 2: small names. They've been really timely, so trends happen really quickly,
Speaker 2: and they've just been reliably really fun and entertaining.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's obviously I'm sure you followed. There's a deal now,
Speaker 1: a proposed deal for TikTok to stay in the United States.
Speaker 1: It's kind of unique because it calls for the US
Speaker 1: government to be somewhat involved and you know, if not managing,
Speaker 1: at least overseeing this new US TikTok does this worry
Speaker 1: you at all? Like that the US government might perhaps
Speaker 1: have an incentive for TikTok to do better than Instagram.
Speaker 2: Be careful of my words.
Speaker 1: We're all friends here. You're welcome to say whatever you want.
Speaker 2: What could go wrong? Yeah, I'll say a few things.
Speaker 2: I do think it's good that TikTok is still going
Speaker 2: to be in the US. It would certainly make our
Speaker 2: lives easier on the professional side to have less competition,
Speaker 2: But I think competition is fundamentally healthy. They've pushed us
Speaker 2: to do better work. I think it's good for the
Speaker 2: consumer and it's good for competition, So I'm glad that
Speaker 2: they're still going to be around. On the specifics of
Speaker 2: the deal, it just seems all very hard to parse.
Speaker 2: It looks like more or less there's a bit of
Speaker 2: an ownership and a rev share change, but not an
Speaker 2: actual real change in how it's built and in you know,
Speaker 2: because you know by dancing TikTok share code. Historically, most
Speaker 2: of the most the strongest ranking work has come out
Speaker 2: of China. Like, I don't see anything that suggests that
Speaker 2: any of how it's actually built it's going to meaningfully change.
Speaker 2: It just seems like an ownership stake and a rev
Speaker 2: share going that's split between obviously by dancing the new
Speaker 2: owners here. But it's the same map, the same ranking system,
Speaker 2: you know, the same creators that you're following, the same people.
Speaker 2: It all sort of seamless. So it seems a little
Speaker 2: bit hard to I'm not sure what to make of that.
Speaker 2: It doesn't seem like it's a major change in terms
Speaker 2: of incentives. Yeah, I mean we always want to be considered.
Speaker 2: We always want to consider all the incentives of the
Speaker 2: most relevant parties involved. But I just want to stay
Speaker 2: focused on how do we make sure Instagram does a
Speaker 2: great job where they're better than us, how do we
Speaker 2: catch up where we think we've got a competitive advantage,
Speaker 2: how do we double down? And how do we keep
Speaker 2: moving forward and trying to make Instagram as valuable as
Speaker 2: possible for people, and then trying not to get too
Speaker 2: sucked into the noise of the of the drama of.
Speaker 1: The week, maybe supporting your direct competitors, all that stuff.
Speaker 2: We think about it, but we try to focus on
Speaker 2: what we can control and spend less time on what
Speaker 2: we cannot.
Speaker 1: We'll only have a few more minutes. It's always flies
Speaker 1: by there was a report that you guys are building
Speaker 1: a TV app? Are you building a TV app? Let's
Speaker 1: make some news.
Speaker 2: This is it. We're exploring TV. TV is an increasingly
Speaker 2: important surface. It's been very important for YouTube. Neil's talked
Speaker 2: about that publicly, the CEO there. It's been very important
Speaker 2: for TikTok. So we'd like to figure out how to
Speaker 2: make sure that we have we show up in a
Speaker 2: compelling way on all the relevant devices. So we're definitely
Speaker 2: exploring it, but nothing to announce today.
Speaker 1: Why now, though, Why explore it now versus a few
Speaker 1: years ago, because, as you point out.
Speaker 2: I wish we had explored a few Okay, why didn't you?
Speaker 2: We've been busy. It seems like every year is a
Speaker 2: little bit more intense and a little bit more wild.
Speaker 2: I see that as a mistake though on my part,
Speaker 2: so I'll take ownership for that. I know we've been
Speaker 2: focusing a lot on ranking. We've been focusing a lot
Speaker 2: on evolving the experience forward. We've been focusing a lot
Speaker 2: on safety and parents. We've been focusing a lot of
Speaker 2: just compliance. Like I said, the biggest risk that we
Speaker 2: face is that the world changes too quickly. Not too
Speaker 2: quickly it's going to change quickly, and we don't change
Speaker 2: quickly enough to adapt. And if behavior in the consumption
Speaker 2: of these platforms is moving to TV, then we need
Speaker 2: to move to TV too as a form factor. And
Speaker 2: if we're late, that's on us.
Speaker 1: Right now, on you, right now, these videos.
Speaker 2: Your deep voice that sounded it did.
Speaker 1: Say it came off a little more dramatical. When I'm
Speaker 1: on Instagram looking at video, it's almost all vertical video.
Speaker 1: When I look at a TV, it's not. Have you
Speaker 1: through this exploration, have you thought about whether the stuff
Speaker 1: that's on Instagram today works on TV? Or do you
Speaker 1: need to go out and you know, basically source new
Speaker 1: video that fits a TV screen.
Speaker 2: I think the vertical content can work on TV because
Speaker 2: I think we can also show there's a couple, we
Speaker 2: can show social context, we can show you the comments,
Speaker 2: we can show us as watching. There's a bunch of
Speaker 2: things you can do with that space. We might we
Speaker 2: do still have horizontal content. We might need to lean
Speaker 2: into that too, but I'd rather first figure out how
Speaker 2: we can embrace the content ecosystem that already exists and
Speaker 2: the creatives that already exist on the platform. And if
Speaker 2: we have to expand. If it turns out we have
Speaker 2: to expand, then we'll certainly consider that.
Speaker 1: Then it was going to say, it's our world in
Speaker 1: which you go and you know, license more kickback content.
Speaker 2: I don't like licensing content if I can avoid it.
Speaker 2: The look, we pay for lots of licensing in general,
Speaker 2: for people are going to share stuff on our platform,
Speaker 2: whether or not we want them to, music licenses, et cetera.
Speaker 2: We're always going to try to make sure we pay
Speaker 2: people for the rights, you know, when we need to.
Speaker 2: But I wouldn't. I'm not interested in trying to go
Speaker 2: get sports rights or exclusive entertainment rights because I'd much
Speaker 2: rather be the second screen. I'd much rather be where
Speaker 2: you talk about the game or the movie we're in.
Speaker 2: I feel like connecting with your friends and short from
Speaker 2: video can be really simp iiotic, and short form video
Speaker 2: and long form video can be really symbiotic. But long
Speaker 2: form video and connecting with your friends it's really difficult
Speaker 2: to do in one place. If you're just watching a
Speaker 2: basketball game or a movie or an hour long show,
Speaker 2: it's a lot of time that you're not actually talking
Speaker 2: to a friend. A lot of things you're not sending
Speaker 2: to friends or seeing that you might send to friends,
Speaker 2: et cetera. So I'd rather focus on user generated content
Speaker 2: creators AI unless on premium long form licensed content.
Speaker 1: We've hit all the zeros very last, so that I
Speaker 1: don't get in trouble. What's your one tip if you're
Speaker 1: a creator trying to hit a big on Instagram today,
Speaker 1: what's the one piece of advice you would give? And
Speaker 1: again short, so that I don't get you.
Speaker 2: Know, yeah, you don't get too much trouble out and
Speaker 2: I can just fill a buster and go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, get me back.
Speaker 2: I think it's really important to be intentional, specifically to
Speaker 2: articulate what you're trying to accomplish by using a platform
Speaker 2: like Instagram. So you might be trying to sell a
Speaker 2: product or brand, or raise awareness for a cause or
Speaker 2: build up demand for a brand. What just write down
Speaker 2: what you're trying to accomplish, and then also to be
Speaker 2: very clear about what is going to actually resonate with
Speaker 2: an audience, what's going to work on the platform. And
Speaker 2: you need to find a content strategy that is at
Speaker 2: the overlap of those two things, because reach is great,
Speaker 2: but reaches a means to an end. So if you
Speaker 2: find content that is engaging, but it's not actually helping
Speaker 2: you move towards your goals, it's useless. And if you
Speaker 2: find content that is going to help you with your
Speaker 2: goals but no one sees it, it's not going to
Speaker 2: be effective. It is much harder to find a content
Speaker 2: strategy that does both. But that's the job. That's the work,
Speaker 2: and that's going to require persistence, intentionality, and experimentation. But
Speaker 2: I really, I really preach the overlap