Meta's New Vibes Feed: How AI Video is Becoming Social

Meta has launched a new feed called Vibes on its Meta AI app, replacing the old Discover feed with a space dedicated to short-form AI-generated videos from creators and communities. The feature is rolling out on both the mobile app and the meta.ai website, giving it multiple entry points for users to find and share content. The Verge

What Vibes Does

Vibes is a content feed built into the Meta AI app designed for creators to share AI-generated video. Users can either create videos directly in the app using AI tools or share AI videos they've already made on Facebook, Instagram, or other Meta platforms. The key difference from the old Discover feed: Vibes is built around creation and sharing, not just passive browsing. It's encouraging people to make something and put it on the feed, rather than just scrolling through what others have posted. Reuters

This matters because it shapes how people use the Meta AI app. Instead of visiting just to ask questions or get summaries, users now have a reason to spend time creating — and sharing that creation is its own reward.

The Labeling System

Meta is requiring creators to label realistic AI-generated images, videos, or audio that could fool someone into thinking it's real. These labeled pieces get an 'AI Info' tag so viewers know what they're looking at. If a creator doesn't add the label when they should, Meta won't remove the content, but it will get less visibility in feeds — a softer penalty than outright deletion. AP News

It's worth considering the trade-offs here. The downranking approach is gentler than removing content, which has been a major source of controversy for Meta in the past. But it also means Meta's automated systems have to decide what counts as "realistic enough" to require a label, and that's not always a clear line. For creators, this creates uncertainty — they might not know exactly where the threshold is, and that could affect what they choose to post.

The Data Connection

Vibes doesn't exist purely as a creative outlet. In December 2024, Meta announced it would start using data from how people interact with the Meta AI app — including what videos they engage with — to personalize content and ads on Facebook and Instagram. That capability goes live in December 2025. Reuters

That timing is important. Every video you watch on Vibes, every piece you create, tells Meta something about your preferences — what styles you like, what topics interest you, how long you spend on things. Once December rolls around, that information feeds into the algorithm that decides what appears in your Facebook and Instagram feeds and which ads you see. So Vibes is doing double duty: it's a creative surface for users, and it's a data collection tool for Meta's advertising business.

OpenAI Is Playing the Same Game

Meta isn't alone in seeing the opportunity. OpenAI has built a social media app around Sora, its video generation model, targeting the same short-form video audience that TikTok serves. AP News

Both companies are treating AI-generated video as more than just a tool you access through a website. They're building it as a social experience — something you create, share, and see in a feed. The underlying bet is that the next major place people spend time online will be feeds of machine-made content, and whoever builds the smoothest path from creation to sharing to discovery will win the audience.

This pattern has happened before. In the mid-2000s, when video moved from dedicated websites into social feeds, the race wasn't really about video technology. It was about who controlled the feed algorithm, who motivated creators to upload, and who sold the ads. YouTube won that race because it got all three things right before anyone else could catch up. The question now is whether one company can control all three parts of the AI video chain — the model that creates it, the feed that shows it, and the ads around it. Right now, Meta is the only company that credibly does all three.

Why This Matters for Meta's Strategy

The Meta AI app faces a real challenge: it needs to be useful enough to pull people away from Facebook and Instagram, but also feed data back to those main platforms. Vibes solves that puzzle in an interesting way. Instead of giving users a reason to open the app for utility tasks like answering questions or summarizing text, Meta is giving them a reason to open it to create and share — activities that are inherently social.

This reflects what's actually working in consumer AI right now. Pure utility AI — a chatbot that answers questions or drafts emails — has the potential to be useful, but most people don't open it every day. Creative AI — tools that let you make something you can show to friends — tends to keep people coming back, because sharing with others creates its own reward loop.

For anyone paying attention to how Meta is building its AI future, Vibes signals a real strategic choice: the company isn't betting that people will prefer a standalone AI assistant over ChatGPT or Google's tools. Instead, it's betting that people will keep coming back for a social experience built around AI creation. The shift from the old Discover feed — which was about browsing — to Vibes — which is about making and sharing — tells you a lot about where Meta thinks the engagement will be.

The three pieces holding this together are the labeling rules, the data integration planned for December 2025, and the ability to cross-post from other Meta platforms. On their own, each is a small change. Put together, they describe a whole ecosystem where AI video is the content, Meta's feed is how it spreads, and the information you generate while using it is what powers the business.