Is AI Killing Social Media?

Read Time: 1 min 50 secs

Hey — Ryan here.

In today’s edition we’ll be covering:

• The State of AI Marketing

• How to NOT fall behind in 2025

• 3 Key Takeaways for Creators and Brands (stay til’ the end)

The year is 2026

The internet is pure AI chaos…

AI avatars, AI art, and AI content flood your feed

Every video is hacking the algorithm for views but nothing feels ‘real’ anymore

Viewers are fatigued, overwhelmed, burnt out

We enter the dead internet theory (interesting read)

You can’t help but ask yourself:

Where is the future of social media headed? And are creators f*cked?

Well let’s rewind to present day:

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ve seen these AI Studio Ghibli graphics on your feed

This is ChatGPT 4o’s Image Generation tool and it’s just getting started…

I visited a incubator/tech fellowship in SF last week and one founder had a hot take:

My take?

Repeatable task will be replaced, but taste and creativity won’t

You can’t ‘train’ AI to be original

Here’s living proof

The State of AI Marketing

 @davinci_production claimed to use ‘advanced storyboarding’ and ‘detailed prompting systems’ to create this video.

Turns out it was a blatant copy of an original film by @jorisnoordenbos

jorisnoordenbos

18K followers

View more on Instagram

So here’s where the internet is headed:

• Trends will move in a matter of days, not weeks

• AI marketing hacks will get saturated eventually losing the novelty that made it once go viral

So what’s left? @pierce_woodward, a creator founder himself, put it best:

It’s never been easier to build products, draft up creatives, and automate your work

The only thing that’s left to stand out from competitors is building a personal brand

All you creator founders take notes: B2C, B2B, media

If there ever was a ‘sign’ to do so it’s now or never

How to NOT fall behind in 2025

As a content marketer and entrepreneur myself I can’t help but ask ‘how does this impact me’

Well the answer is simple: it doesn’t

Here’s why:

The most important moat in the next decade is building an audience

In a world where you can’t decipher AI slop between real content, the only thing left is

(1) Connection and (2) Trust

Building a creator-led brand has never been more important than ever

Humans crave connection with Humans

So here’s what you need to know:

3 Key Takeaways

1️⃣ Lean into your humanity: Document your process, share your failures, and reveal the messy reality behind your polished content. AI can't authentically share a journey it hasn't lived.

2️⃣ Create multi-sensory experiences: Combine formats that AI struggles with—in-person events, physical products, interactive experiences. The analog world is becoming a competitive advantage.

3️⃣ Build your "proof of human" signals: Develop recognizable quirks, patterns, and stylistic choices that audiences can identify as uniquely yours. Think of it as your signature style.

Thanks for showing up this week ❤️

Ryan To