AI video fakes have destroyed what I used to love about Instagram

When you can’t even be sure if a charming video of a cat or a swinging gorilla is real, how are we supposed to believe anything we post online, asks Frieda Hughes

Instagram Aversion

Once I’d loved your playful cats’ paws

And their kitchen bin-lid doings,

And the dog’s destruction of your soft furnishings.

I was easily addicted to the clever recipes

I’d never cook, but craved a look at your makings,

Until this week, when finding your reality among the AI fakes

Became too time-consuming, when time is currency.

A gorilla swinging from a branch that broke

In front of his laughing mate, left his fingers

Still clinging to the stump, an editing mistake in the fiction,

And a man’s full tonne of stretchered flesh,

Barely clothed against our aerial view

Being craned from a top-floor American window

Appeared almost convincing, but AI editing

Meant that my attention had just been snatched in the lie

Of his gargantuan size. So now

I don’t believe your achievements and doubt your postings.

For the first time, I have no interest in Instagram

As the AI fakery of others obscures the reality

That used to so engage me.