How to turn off AI content across TikTok and Pinterest

AI slops are hitting feeds faster than anyone can scroll through them, and the talk of the billionaires funding this generative future – Zuckerberg, Musk, Altman, etc. – did not convince their own users. It seems that people increasingly want less machine-generated waste, not more. Now, some of the biggest social platforms are quietly offering ways to reduce the synthetic noise they’ve spent the last two years amplifying.

People are quick to talk about why they are fed up with synthetic products. Fandoms ban AI “fan art” because it flattens every character into the same glassy-eyed model, and book communities have pushed publishers to replace covers that were quietly constructed from Midjourney’s leftovers. Many studies point in the same direction: people want AI to help artists, not create art; people show a clear bias against AI-generated art when they think a machine created it; and people choose man-made work even if they can’t immediately tell the difference.

Platforms such as webtoon publishing site Tapas have already gone so far as to ban AI artwork altogether, and DC Comics is reassuring fans that it won’t use generative tools – “not now, not ever.” Even on Facebook Reels and TikTok, the cutest, tastiest corners of the internet seem strange, because no one asked for a wave of six-legged AI puppies or recipe videos that look like they were put together by someone who’s never set foot in a kitchen. The appetite is always for the real.

Billions of AI videos (1.3 billion, to be exact) are now in TikTok’s own tagged archives, and image generators have released billions more images to the wider web, enough that in communities where uploads can be tracked — like Pixiv, which said, using 2023 data, that about 15 to 20 percent of recent posts are AI — synthetic elements are clearly reshaping the feed.

So some platforms are starting to move towards something resembling a kill switch.

TikTok is testing an on-off slider for AI content that quietly admits that, for some, its For You page has tipped too far into weirdness. Pinterest just rolled out an AI anti-tilt control system designed for people who want to browse handmade ceramics without wading through AI-generated shows that look like they were staged by a eucalyptus-obsessed algorithm. YouTube continues to require creators to tag their synthetic clips, even though those tags rarely survive re-upload, and Instagram is experimenting with disclosures after users complained that its recommendations were even more inauthentic than usual.

The mud is now damaging the product. Feeds loaded with synthetic filler make people scroll less, trust less, and post less, and that equation ultimately matters more than the novelty of letting the machines run wild. And for the first time in a long time, platforms seem willing to admit that people might want a little less of the future they were promised.

An escape page for you

TikTok’s AI escape hatch is a simple on-off slider inserted into its Manage Topics menu: Settings → Content Preferences → Manage Topics → AI-Generated Content. Push the AI-generated content slider down and the app starts removing the synthetic clips that have taken over the feed — the “cinematic moments,” the drama the AI ​​recaps with faces that never really blink, the stitched-up voiceovers that sound like a podcaster trapped in a tin can.

With the switch off, a feed filled with BTS fancams, lip liner reviews, and chrome-rich home design inspiration stays closer to that path instead of drifting toward weird roommates, “story time”-generated romances, or AI kittens with fur that looks like wet carpet. TikTok told regulators that it has already labeled more than 1.3 billion AI-generated videos on the platform, meaning that if you leave this control alone, the algorithm has enough machine-made filler to fall back on before showing you another human.

TikTok is also adding detection to try to prevent this slider from turning into theater. Any video made with tools like AI Editor Pro, or uploaded with C2PA’s content credentials, will carry an invisible watermark that TikTok can read, so the app can still spot AI clips after they’ve been edited, reposted, or brought onto the app from somewhere else. This gives the company a better map of how much generative content is flowing through the For You feed at any given time — and the slider gives users at least somewhere to step back when their carefully tuned algorithmic mix goes awry. More Jungkook, less Franken faces.

Saving your weirdness inspiration boards

Pinterest has become ground zero for AI-distorted inspiration: hairstylists, florists and wedding planners told the Washington Post earlier this year that AI-powered hair, makeup and event “ideas” were distorting customer expectations so much that they had to start warning people up front. The point of Pinterest is that you can save something and make it real; AI has broken this promise. Users have been asking for a filter for months; Pinterest responded by adding clearer “AI-edited” labels and, now, the ability to blunt the synthetic edge of the feed. Reddit threads cheered when the toggle finally appeared.

The company placed the fix under: Settings → Refine your recommendations → GenAI Interests, where you’ll find a set of sliders that allow you to remove AI-generated images from categories like beauty, architecture, kids’ fashion, art, sports, and home decor. Turn off these sliders and the feed stops directing you toward “dream pantry” layouts that feature physics-defying IKEA hacks.

Pinterest executives keep repeating that the feature is a “see less” tool, not a “see nothing” guarantee, and CEO Bill Ready has argued that no platform can completely remove AI-generated content once it’s loose in the ecosystem. The website states that “at Pinterest, we’ve always used both forms of classic AI to help people find inspiration and create the life they love.” That may be true, but the slider at least gives people a way to protect the parts of Pinterest that are worth opening: the handmade ceramics, the real apartments, the paint colors that actually exist in stores. The site’s AI switch is a small check in a very visual corner of the internet, but it comes just as users began noticing that too many of their saved Pins looked like renderings of homes that couldn’t pass a building inspection.

A mosaic of fixes

The rest of the social media industry is struggling in its own way to contain the AI ​​mess. YouTube now requires creators to disclose AI edits (changed faces, voices, entire scenes), but those tags disappear as soon as a video is re-uploaded, which is why familiar synthetic clips keep bouncing around the site. Instagram introduced “Made with AI” labels after users said its recommendation surfaces looked incredibly polished. Reddit moderators, exhausted by generative spam, banned AI altogether in dozens of communities.

But even as some sites find ways to reduce the slope, others turn the dial even further in the opposite direction. Meta tested Vibes, an AI-generated video feed — which Mark Zuckerberg announced with a glowing Instagram Reel full of fluffy creatures and an Egyptian pharaoh taking a selfie — has already attracted about two million users this fall. (Someone responded to the demo: “Bros releases ai slop on its own app.”)

Meta tested Vibes, an AI-generated video feed that signals the scale of the company’s synthetic ambitions. Mark Zuckerberg announced the service with a glossy Instagram Reel filled with fluffy creatures and an Egyptian pharaoh taking a selfie. It already has around two million users. (Someone responded to the demo: “Bros releases ai slop on its own app.”) Meanwhile, OpenAI’s Sora app, a TikTok-like competitor, treats AI-generated video as a social format in its own right; users can create clips of themselves, their pets, their friends, or entire imagined scenes and launch them directly to TikTok. And tools like Luma Labs’ Dream Machine give anyone with a dialog box the power to produce fully synthetic video on an industrial scale.

So while TikTok and Pinterest test filters to keep their feeds from so often drifting into weirdness, a parallel universe of apps is expanding the supply of generative content faster than anyone can find a way to contain it.

The platforms may claim that this uncontrollable flow is the natural cost of innovation, but they are the ones who spent two years tuning the Internet to reward whatever could be generated fastest. These AI filters, sliders, and disclosures won’t entirely stop the rise of generative AI, but they mark a first real line in the sand. Users say they’re tired of feeds that seem designed to deceive them, tired of models guessing at their tastes, tired of scrolling through generative eye candy that fails to satisfy no matter which “creator” made it. Platforms can continue to release endless synthetic clips, but their audiences still have a say in what deserves a place in the scroll.