Elon Musk: "We're Bringing Back Vine, But in AI Form", Whatever The Hell That Means
Reuters – Elon Musk's social media company X is bringing back popular video-sharing platform Vine in "AI form", the billionaire tech-entrepreneur said on Thursday, almost nine years after the app was discontinued.
Musk made the announcement in a post on X, formerly Twitter, but did not provide further details. X did not immediately respond to a Reuters request seeking more information on the reboot.
I always hear people talk about Vine as if it were the best form of social media to ever exist. The most revolutionary app to ever be invented. The single greatest entertainment platform to bless the internet in our lifetimes. That some of the most side-splittingly hilarious pieces of media we've ever witnessed were only made possible by Vine's ultra-short, ultra-innovative, six-second video platform.
I enjoyed Vines just fine. But I was never up late glued to my phone scrolling through them. I don't know any friends who were actively posting on it. There's definitely a lot of good stuff that came out of it, but when I go back and look at the some of the most popular Vines of all time, I'm not necessarily blown away by the content. It's nothing that couldn't still be created today.
But I will admit... now that I've done some "best Vines of all-time" Googling... some of these videos are pretty good. Videos that definitely could, but I'm not sure would be made today now that there's nobody giving them a reason to be concise.
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The more I dive into old Vines, the more I'm starting to remember why people liked them so much. It's all about the six-seconds. People really revere how Vine only gave users a six-second window in which to be entertaining. They say the same about TikTok and Twitter. TikTok was better when videos were limited to 15 seconds. Twitter used to be so great when tweets were capped at 140 characters. And it's hard to argue that Twitter wasn't a better place before RGIII was posting 20 paragraph diatribes on race relations, and Ryan Clark was shaming his white wife in response to Angel Reese posting a double-double. Putting such a strict limit on the length of video (or word count) forced people to be brief. It forced them to be creative. It forced them to cut the fat off whatever joke or concept they had come up with and get straight to the point.
Maybe the great thing about Vine wasn't necessarily the incredible physical media that came out of it (although I'm now seeing there's more good stuff than I originally remembered), but Vine undoubtedly had a lasting impact on the way people think when making videos. It helped usher in a whole new style of content. I'm not sure TikTok would have ever happened without Vine paving the way. And that six-second time limit really lent itself to producing some great soundbites that are still referenced today.
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So great. Let's bring back Vine. I'm all about it. What could possibly be the downside to that? What could possibly be the one thing that would take Vine's simple six-second video concept and make it terrible?
Aw fuck there's two things. AI and Elon Musk. Jesus Christ. I don't even know what that means. I'm not sure Elon Musk even knows what he means by that. "We have this great concept that everyone loves and wants back. So let's just sprinkle in a little AI (and a dash of me, Elon Musk) just to make sure nobody gets too excited."
That actually might be a genius idea. Set the bar as low as possible. I still think people look back on Vine with rose-colored glasses a bit. People would have their hopes up SO HIGH for a Vine return. Maybe Elon Musk promising to poison it with AI will temper exceptions to the point that if this new version of Vine is even passable, people will be pleasantly surprised.
What could "but in AI form" actually mean? Maybe he's only talking about using AI for the algorithm? That would be best case scenario. But what it sounds like to me is that people are going to have the option of writing a short script, then telling VineAI, "Have a fat toothless man and a cute talking baby make this joke while riding a jetski."
I guess that's sort of cool? Selfishly, it would probably be good for a guy like me. Oftentimes I think I can come up with a funny concept, but I don't necessarily have the talent or charisma to carry it out on camera. So if I can have a charming AI person do the acting part for me… maybe I could capitalize off that. But that's not a good thing for society. Soon enough people are going to making entire careers from their couch, while their AI-avatar is out exploring the city, interviewing AI-people on the street, having fake AI-world experiences. I know that's already happening to some degree. But I'd imagine things like "Vine, but in AI form" are only going to make the barrier of entry to doing things like that even easier. That's not a world I want to live in.
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I can't imagine this new version of Vine would completely take away the option of creating and posting a personal, non-AI created video. We might end up having a John Henry vs The Machine type of arms race between people & non-people creators on VineAI. Which would be kind of a fun race to monitor in its own right. But overall, IF that's what Elon Musk means by "We're bringing back Vine, but in AI form" (which is a big IF, because we have no idea what he actually means by it), I don't like it. I don't like AI in the creative space at all. Whether it's cooking food, making music, doing stand-up comedy, etc., I wish we as a society had the self-control to at least leave some things to humans.